February 2016 Game Plan

If you haven’t read my previous blog post I suggest you do so. This month’s game will be a remake of a game called Buggers! which I did for Ludum Dare 26.  My plan is to convert the existing code over to my new framework, update the graphics, add joystick support, more game play elements, a high score list, more levels, and investigate a 2-player mode. This month is a bit of an exception since I started working on this remake before I came up with the idea of 6 games in 6 months on 5 platforms (6-6-5). My first commit of the new Buggers was Jan 26, but I think I started work on it around Jan 24 or so. I have done a first pass at updating the graphics and have already ported most of the old code to my new framework. Here is a before/after comparison graphically:

As you can see in the remake screenshot, I’ve also started working on getting some controls ready for a mobile version. I was fiddling with different ways to implement touch controls and only today settled on using Unity’s Cross Platform Input package with a few tweaks (check out this video for a tutorial).   One of the things I worked on for quite a while for my previous two commercial releases (Terra Forma and Roboticon) was UI sizing/scaling.  I’m hoping to get the same or better results with less complicated code and setup. So far things are looking OK, but I have yet to test on any of my Android devices proper or on iOS/Mac in general.  I’ve added “check UI scaling/sizing” to my monthly todo list so I’ll be looking into it more.  Hopefully I can find a set of general practices that will make the UI scaling/sizing easier each time I do a new game. Until tomorrow…