Trying to develop a game while also trying to enjoy time off here and there AND blog about it is not an easy task. So Cat and I are going to try to do a nightly post... no matter what.
Yesterday we had a long discussion about the direction we're taking the game. It's always an amusing experience since obviously different people will have different ideas, and it takes good communication to come to an agreement. There have been things that we implement for the sake of trying it out and play testing, and things that we end up reverting because it worked better "the old way."
We slacked off for a solid week, so now we're buckling up and getting back to business.
The biggest change we've made is we're moving away from time based and towards a turn based mechanic. Think less tetris/puzzle fighter and more puzzle quest/gyromancer. Code wise it was a breeze thanks to the way Cat implemented the timer logic. Basically he created a timer service that yells out notifications based on whatever and whenever you tell it. Since the monster attacks are listening for those notifications to know when to do their attacks, it was as easy as removing the timer, and replacing it with code that sends out the notifications whenever the player touches cards. BAM, we're now turn based.
The biggest concerns I had with the "action" timer version is that I think it strongly penalizes players that are slow, players that aren't particularly video game savvy. It also limits how "strategic" the game can get because how strategic can you be when you're trying to flip cards as fast as your fingers allow. One of our beta testers kept talking about how it's giving him carpel tunnel syndrome.
We're toying with some other ideas. In the current build, the cards are all flash briefly for a moment before they're all flipped over. I think this dramatically changes the game, and combined with the switch to turn based, I'm... whew, not even sure what this means... well, other than a whole lot more re-balancing.
We've also moved things around. Abilities moved up, game board moved down. No more "energy/mana" and instead all abilities are cool-down based. We're kinda splitting abilities into two types. (Still under discussion though) There are the "attack" types that you get access to when the board clears, and then there will be the "special" abilities that are accessible at all times but limited by their cooldowns.
Whenever you're trying to do something, you have to make sure it makes SENSE. Like intuitive sense. This is important for any game, but particularly in the mobile space where people have the attention spans of goldfish, so whatever they need to "learn" to play your game needs to be easy to understand and just plain make sense.
This is why we're having a long discussion about things like separating out two different types of abilities and how they're presented to the user. If our interface isn't clear, the user will be confused and not understand what the buttons do or what they are for or why they have different behaviors.
Anyhow, so we've set some pretty high goals for Saturday. We've also committed to releasing a weekly build to our beta testers (and we've added a bunch of iPhones to the mix thanks to Test Flight App). I'll let cat talk about this, but apparently it makes deploying our iPhone build to them a breeze (because apparently it's a PITA to deploy betas on iPhones, but I wouldn't know, I can't even BUILD an iphone version since I don't have a mac) At least deploying on android is as easy as emailing out an APK. The one "benefit" you could argue for iPhone is that your app can't get into the wild. That's why there is a date-based kill switch in the app though. Sure you can get around it, but really, do you care to for a beta? And shoot, do WE really care if you want our game so bad that you'll play and distribute our beta? Can't say that it bothers me that much. In fact, I'd be flattered.
Anyhow, back to work. Have to get this XP/leveling system working properly.
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