Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Camera Movement

I´ve just recorded this video to show how the camera movement is done in The Cave, an iPhone game. If you tap on an object then it´s selected but if you tap on screen and move your finger, the camera will move along the diamond border always targeting at the center wormhole.

Monday, January 26, 2009

Gameplay video

At last! I´ve finally uploaded a gameplay video to YouTube. The quality is bad, framerate is low due to the screen capture program and it´s not edited but it will be enough for you to get an idea about what´s "The Cave. An iPhone Game" about.
All comments are welcome.

Friday, January 23, 2009

Final changes

Well, I´m having a little delay with the video presentation, I hope this weekend will be the final date for it. I have a reason for this, I´ve been changing some design aspects in game. The floating objects are now space worm larvae. The larvae skin is something like a brain, with veins and in three awesome colours you´ll learn to love. The container is now a transparent rotating sphere through you can see the infinite space. The idea behind it was it had to look like a diamond asteroid. I´ve changed it a lot since the initial development versions but I think this is the final one and it fits quite good with the new camera movement. I´ve added camera movement along the border of the sphere. As you move the finger in the Iphone screen, the camera will slide along the inside of the diamond asteroid in both axis. The achieved effect is much more impressive than the original version, where the camera moved just forward and backward controlled with a finger movement in the left side of the screen. I´ve changed the original fonts used in game presentation, joker shop and menu been now more “grunge”, it´s called Anthology and it´s created by Gyom Seguin. I´ll contact him and make a paypal donation as soon as I´m finished with this. The game is functional at this point but I want to solve some little problems to make it more stable so I can record a video and upload to YouTube this weekend. After that the hardest work is done and it´s time to send it to Apple and publish at AppStore.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Video demo coming soon...

I´ll get a stable and almost final release coming soon so I´ll post here probably in one or two weeks a youtube video showing gameplay. Hope you like it!

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Design Problems

One of the worst things about an indie game developer is design. Even when it´s an important part in a game, the developer capabilities reach its minimum preparing this stage of a game. The brain get cold when you have to design a presentation screen or an asteroid object and after some tries you just select the last one. Colors, textures, forms, fonts, ... Even when game concept is clear, little details produce more headaches than expected. In The Cave you play inside a semi-transparent asteroid so you see through it the infinite space. That was clear but the problem came with asteroid design. Should it be part of the big container? should it be just balls? After some design concepts the thing is not clear and will surely change after I found something beautiful. Another problem was the font used to show text in game. I want it to be something modern and space related but the fonts I found were ugly and I didn´t get comfortable with it. At the end, as I wrote before, I´ll probably use the last one and after the launch I´ll give game design and impulse and change it all.

Monday, January 5, 2009

The Cave

The cave is an Iphone game still in development. You know all that games like Aurora Feint where you have to join three or more pieces. The Cave goes one step further and uses a three dimensional environment where pieces float freely in absence of gravity. I´m a single developer so I decided to start posting my thoughts about this game and getting help from users worldwide. The first working version is almost finished so you will probably see it on App Store quite soon. You play inside a semi-transparent diamond-like asteroid where at least three types of asteroids are floating. There´s also a shop where you can buy other types of objects (as a Joker object) and increase the level of your previously acquired objects. I´ll post more details later but I´d like to know your opinion. Hope you like it!