Friday, July 27, 2012

FF Dev: 01 Update

Froggy Fling Dev Overview

As you can see in the picture things are starting to look a little better aren't they? I certainly think so at least. Below I'm going to detail what's happened up to this point. Kind of like a devlog that I won't update often enough...

IDEA

Originally I came up with a similar idea that I called Puck... something. It's not really important. Basically it was a game that combined air hockey and golf. Like a sad lonely one player air hockey game really. This was intended to be a mobile burst play game where a flinging mechanic would be the main control. After I gave it some thought, I deiced that I did not like the fling. While more visceral it lacks accuracy and is difficult to read. I thought about good controls for touch screen devices with mass appeal and narrowed it down to - 
  • Drag and pull 
    • Pros: High accuracy, intuitive, accessible
    • Cons: Hand over screen, not great for fast paced games
  • Tapping
    • Pros: Moderate accuracy, simple, versatile,  great for cats
    • Cons: Limited min size for easy tappable objects, hand over screen
  • Swiping
    • Pros: Visceral, good for stationary/slow objects
    • Cons: Limited accuracy, hand over screen
  • Shaking/tilt
    • Pros: Clear view of screen, visceral
    • Very limited control, limited use
Another popular control scheme is traditional, say Game Boy, controls displayed on screen. When you look at games that have been widely successful there are very few with this set up. I believe the reason behind this is most people playing mobile games do not want to play Game Boy games; they want to play mobile games. What's the big deal? Games made with a traditional control scheme are great for traditional games, but the majority of people with smart-phones specifically want games with touchscreen functionality and burst gameplay. Essentially games with a traditional control set up are fighting the platform.

After considering the above, I chose the drag and pull for my main control scheme. This would make the game more golf/pool like, but that still fits the over all feel I was looking for. In all honesty I just wanted a game that it would be fun to bounce things around in. 

DEVELOPMENT

I admittedly am not a fantastic coder and this is probably why I was drawn to GameMaker early on. I began prototyping the idea out in GM:Lite to make sure I could do it. After I had several of the main functions working, proof to myself really, I purchased the Studio and Android versions of the program.

While I liked my little orange placeholder puck, I felt that it certainly use a little more...something. In fact the whole game needed more. While it was a fun mechanic to play with, it lacked any sort of  personality. After rolling a few ideas around, bouncing them off people, I decided that the puck should be a frog on a lily pad and the gamespace should be pond themed. Bam! Personality.

Originally you would pull the frog's legs back, body remaining stationary on the pad, but this proved too difficult graphically for me. Instead the frog now remains stationary while the player pulls its tongue out, which upon release flings the frog froward.

Currently I'm working with my girlfriend to get more art assets into the game while I work on the more tedious things like level selections, menus, game saves, etc. I'm sure I'll eventually update this again when I have something more to show. I am hoping to finish this game before September starts, but...we'll see.

No comments:

Post a Comment