Color Mixing with Multitouch #360iDevGJ Game Jam Post 8

OK, It's more fun and more challenging now, although I'm not sure anyone would buy it, even if I polished it.

It was way too easy, so I took a cue from @OwenGoss's Dapple and put in a color mixing element.

So now there are 6 colors of spaceships and 6 colors of shields but still only 3 buttons:

So if you want to block the green aliens, you have to hit the Blue and Yellow buttons at the same time while the green spacecraft enters the atmosphere.

I tried a bit to get a video, but multi-touch in the simulator is way too hard, I have no idea how long it would take to get iSimulate working (I'm running on XCode 3.2.[REDACTED], iOS 4.[REDACTED]GM), or even if it would work at all, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

The good news is, with only a dozen or so of us left, the Internet only feels like 56K dialup.

So now, I'm into the part of game design that throws me: the balancing (for lack of a better word).

There are some games that, when you fail, make you want to throw the controller at the wall and give up in frustration. There are other games that, when you fail, make you think to yourself "I was SOOOO close". While which games fall into which categories vary from player to player, a lot of designers seem to get it right a high percentage of the time.

I'm not one of those designers :).

So I'm going to think about what I want to do for carrot/stick (e.g. points/achievements and game over). I don't have an initial guess because, honestly, I didn't think I'd get far enough tonight that I'd need to worry about it, so I hadn't even thought about it.

The amazing thing is that I've gotten this far, especially since I have mostly not had good enough connectivity to do google searches. I've had the beta draft of the Apress cocos2d book, the Doxygen output for the cocos2d-iphone repo (and of course, the repo's source code), and Tom Frauenhofer's example project from yesterdayMonday morning. That this even feels like it might be a game is a tribute to the ease of use of cocos2d and how good Tom's class was.

It's a Game! (Not sure if it's any fun, yet, though) #360iDevGJ Game Jam Post 7

So it actually kind of looks like a game now. I need scoring, I guess, and some consequences, but the idea is there.

From The List:
1. Get a cocos2d hello world screen showing the big blue ball royalty-free NASA supplied image
2. Get a quick sprite to be the bad guy on the screen.
3. Cover the world in an opaque block when screen is touched and restore it when touches end
4. Make the alien move.
5. Make the alien able to collide with the block.
6. Make the game over popup if the alien collides with the world while the block isn't up.
7. Make aliens and shields of different colors.
8. Make a stream of aliens.
9. See if it's any fun at all.

4 items down, 7 hours to go.

The Sky is falling! #360iDevGJ Game Jam Post 6

Or at least the aliens are.

1. Get a cocos2d hello world screen showing the big blue ball royalty-free NASA supplied image
2. Get a quick sprite to be the bad guy on the screen.
3. Cover the world in an opaque block when screen is touched and restore it when touches end
4. Make the alien move.
5. Make the alien able to collide with the block.
6. Make the game over popup if the alien collides with the world while the block isn't up.
7. Make aliens and shields of different colors.
8. Make a stream of aliens.
9. See if it's any fun at all.

4 items down, 7 hours to go.

Talking to Myself #360iDevGJ Game Jam Post 5

I'm going to keep writing updates to RapidWeaver locally - Although I have no idea when I'll have enough bandwidth to actually publish them.

Kinda takes the fun out of it.

In any case, I have the ship moving (until it hits the bottom of the screen). It's at least looking more like a game now.

Next up: Conveyor Belt

Status Update: Primary-Colored World #360iDevGJ Game Jam Post 4

Really remedial, but something is actually happening. Only took 4 and a half hours to get colors to show up.

But, as for my list:

1. Get a cocos2d hello world screen showing the big blue ball royalty-free NASA supplied image
2. Get a quick sprite to be the bad guy on the screen.
3. Cover the world in an opaque block when screen is touched and restore it when touches end
4. Make the alien move.
5. Make the alien able to collide with the block.
6. Make the game over popup if the alien collides with the world while the block isn't up.
7. Make aliens and shields of different colors.
8. Make a stream of aliens.
9. See if it's any fun at all.

Wonder if I'll make it to #9 before 9AM...