Category Archives: Technical
The Cleanup Sprint
Coming into the home stretch of THE OCTOBER GAME, I took some time to do a little cleanup. What came before After finishing the level editor, I created the last few stages and played the game through many times, editing … Continue reading
Posted in Technical, iDevBlogADay, process
Tagged awesome-fun-cookies, bugs bugs get 'em off me, cleanup, performance, THE OCTOBER GAME
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The Level Editor Sprint, Pt.4
My third attempt at a level editor for THE OCTOBER GAME succeeded, but not how I expected. As I mentioned last time, the game was feature complete including scaffolding like the Top Scores and Help screens. I’d found creating levels by hand to … Continue reading
Posted in Technical, iDevBlogADay, process, tools
Tagged level editor, small bets, THE OCTOBER GAME
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The Level Editor Sprint, Pt.2
My first attempt at a level editor for THE OCTOBER GAME was an instructive failure. Writing code is fun and this leads me to jump into projects, then drown in rising complexity. To counteract this, I try the simplest thing … Continue reading
Posted in Technical, iDevBlogADay, process, tools
Tagged complexity, lessons learned, level editor, rework, THE OCTOBER GAME
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The Level Editor Sprint, part 1
Early on, I decided the THE OCTOBER GAME would have designed levels rather than random ones. That decision led to significant complexity, here’s how: The core of the game is simple, the player jumps up to hit enemies flying across … Continue reading
Posted in Technical, Uncategorized, creative, iDevBlogADay, process, sketch
Tagged complexity, iDevBlogADay, level editor, THE OCTOBER GAME
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The New Year Cleanup Sprint, a post-mortem
What came before At the end of last month, I transplanted THE OCTOBER GAME to a fresh app template. For the next week, I fixed lots of niggling little bugs, did more code cleanup, then another round of tweaking artwork. … Continue reading
Posted in Technical, Uncategorized, iDevBlogADay, process
Tagged mini post-mortem, THE OCTOBER GAME
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The Game Core Transplant, a sprint post-mortem
After regenerating all the art assets, it was time to move THE OCTOBER GAME core to a fresh app template. The game architecture had changed over the months, leaving the project with lots of cruft. Classes had unused methods, or … Continue reading
Posted in Technical, Uncategorized, iDevBlogADay, process
Tagged mini post-mortem, sprint, THE OCTOBER GAME
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Switching gears to get unstuck
Last week I finished a long-overdue upgrade to Lion, Xcode 4 and the latest cocos2d. After I got THE OCTOBER GAME running again, I turned to updating the artwork that I talked about last time. The work wasn’t hard, but … Continue reading
Posted in Technical, Uncategorized, creative, iDevBlogADay, process, traps
Tagged burnout, stuck, switching gears, THE OCTOBER GAME
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GameOver, man
Feature evolution: The Game Over Display I build art for THE OCTOBER GAME in stages: Sketchy art – just as a placeholder Draft art – ties in with the game theme somehow. There are multiple cycles as the style evolves … Continue reading
Posted in Technical, creative, iDevBlogADay, process
Tagged artwork, cheesy, draft, frogs, gameOver, hats, illustration, polish, ranking, show don't tell, sketchy
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The Game Deadline Problem, part 3
THE OCTOBER GAME was taking longer to finish than expected. Since I was unwilling to abandon it after some arbitrary date (that is, set a true deadline), I had to improve my development process. Why was the game taking longer? … Continue reading
Posted in ProTip, Technical, iDevBlogADay, process, traps
Tagged cheevos, cocos2d, deadlines, performance, testing, THE OCTOBER GAME
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Core Animation Performance Tuning
Making THE OCTOBER GAME: Limitations I chose to do the game motion using Core Animation instead of the higher-performing OpenGL. I believed the performance demands would be low enough because of the small size and number of the moving objects. … Continue reading
Posted in Technical, Uncategorized, process
Tagged obstinacy, performance, THE OCTOBER GAME, tuning
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