2009/09/02

Little bit about my iphone game + first picture

Hi kids,

I think I need to describe the game design of my game little bit more than I did before, when I was writing about the basic concept. I could put here whole design document, which I wrote for myself already. But it’s about 5 pages long, so it would be probably boring read for you and the main problem - the game design document is in Czech. You know when I’m writing something just for me I don’t bother with English – I’m sorry for that.

My game from game designer’s point of view


The basic idea of the game is simple. Blocks of 3 (different color) squares/bricks fall down and you can move them in any direction and rotate them. Your goal is to put 3 or more squares of the same color together, that will let them disappear and you will receive some points for that. You have limited time to control the actual block of bricks. After that limit is over, next block will appear and you have another few seconds to position it as good as you can. If there is not enough space for another block the game is over.

There’s gonna be some level system with progressive difficulty. Each time you destroy some amount of bricks, you will progress to next level. Each new level means less time to control your block and sometimes even new color brick appear. That will make game harder and harder with each new level. There’s also gonna be some score bonuses to make scoring system more variable, but I don’t wanna tell you all details. I need to keep some thing as a secret until the game is finished. And - as you know - every woman has to have some secret!

Physics? Yes, physics!


But the main thing is physics, which plays huge role here. All the bricks are affected by gravity, they collide with each other, move fluently – not like in Tetris, where they jump from one position to another – and they act like made of rubber or gel. You know not like huge heavy stone bricks, but more like jelly bricks.

During designing my game in my head I had some troubles about controls and how to deal with it. I didn’t want to use gyroscopic system much, not for the main gameplay. I have one idea how to use gyroscopes in my game, but it’s gonna be like side effect or “cool feature” (Am I cool grandma when I use word cool?:). It won’t affect main gameplay, but I will probably describe that in some future post...

A struggle with on-screen controls


So I was thinking really hard how to use all these touches and multitouches the best way possible. One idea was to put little icons of keys on the screen – 4 as arrow keys for moving, 2 for rotation (clockwise and counterclockwise), then I figure out that something like stick instead of arrow keys would be better and then I completely left this idea of keys on the screen. I found out, that it would be much more comfortable to use whole screen to control the game. But how? Ok, sliding finger over the screen moves the block – that’s clear. But the rotation? Oh yeah, we have multitouch! It hits me like a storm! Simple use 2 fingers and move over the screen and the block will rotate. I have made some tests already and it works great - I’m so excited about that!

Ok kids, I think that’s all for today. Wait, no! Oh boy, I almost forgot - I have one picture for you. It is my iPhone with very early version of my game without graphics.



Next time I’m planning to write more about the physics and all the problems I’m solving each day with that and maybe, just maybe, I will show you some parts of the game...

Love,

Granny Marie

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