One After Another It was a pretty productive weekend for myself:
- User input on the beginning splash screens speeds up there fade time tremendously.
- Blocks now drop after ones below them clear.
- Implimentation of new artwork
- Bug Fixes
Every Comment Matters I took into account what comments I had recieved. Some being bizare ("Make it so that you can play on the Wii") and others being constructive ("Speed up the begining splash screens"). I went over the whole idea of how to do my splash screens based on what was said and I came up with two solutions.
1. Have the beginning splash screens only run the first time the game is played, after that they can be viewed in the Credits menu.
2. If the user makes any input during these screens it would quickly fade them out.
I decided that using option two was the way to go. Simply because I want Besome Games to be something that people remember, so if I had given them the option of watching it once it might slip out of there mind. By seeing it every time it gives me a better chance of having people remember, but with the option to speed through it those that begin to grow tired of seeing it [lol].
Besome's First Rule of Gravity This was by far my favorite part of the weekend, the implimentation of the games gravity for the blocks. Let me run you through what happens in this process. After the active block you have is set into place the game checks through the board to see if any blocks are connected in numbers greater then four. Once any matching blocks have been cleared off the screen (with a very nice visual effect) all of the blocks above those are dropped down until they are resting ontop of blocks again. Once they have dropped down, we check to see if there if any blocks connect. If they do, repeat process. If not then you gain control of a new peice and the game continues. It looks very nice in motion, Unfortunatly I cant take any videos of this, as the FPS drops to about 12 while trying to record a video. Maby after the game sells a few copys, I can upgrade the old PC!
So Many Squares The artwork so far is coming out great! I recieved a batch of multiple block sets from dbaumgart
, check them out!
There will be use for multiple block sets in the game, however how they will be used your going to have to wait and see [cool].
Man I hate bugs I spent alot of time fixing a few very nasty bugs. The worst being a way in which I control the state of my menus. Previously you could click the buttons and such before they finished moving to there final places. This led to alot of issues mostly causing the menus to freeze. I had to change this and how things work great! Another little nasty bug that has made it this far was the fact I never checked colision correctly when the block was rotate to be below the main block. You could use this to erase blocks right off the board, defiantly not a good one!
On The Horizon Theres alot coming and I can't wait for it to get here. The art is being finalized right now so that for this first milestone everything will be set up with the final versions of its artwork. Also im in the middle of making a new website for Besome Games Official Homepage. The one I have now is drab and very uninformative. Keep an eye out, theres many new things to come.
In Closing Fill me in. Let me know what you think of the new blocks. Once the artwork is finished and implimented I will release another playable version, this time compiled in release mode [grin]. The best part of my day is seeing what people have had to say to me, so let me know what ya think!
