At this time, we've basically narrowed down our ideas to two essential prototypes. First, we have the ongoing movement-based prototype. Second, we have the iPhone micro-series project. From this point, we've primarily utilized the last week to begin gathering all of the content required for Stage One. This primarily means conducting QA, forming the documentation, and meeting with faculty for the disciplinary review content.
I spent the early part of this week preparing the prototype for the QA sessions during the weekend. This meant implementing a system for tagging and collection. For the moment, we've decided to keep the basis for the beacon system, implementing a method of allowing the player to also tag three nearby beacon objects in order to collect any treasure they might find.
Developing this mechanic took a few hours, mainly to polish the method of tossing the tagging projectile, and to properly debug any problems that might have occurred with the beacon interactions. Otherwise, the mechanic is pretty well developed, and should be extensible during future development.
However, the reality is, with this particular prototype, it is more likely that we will favor the iPhone project after passing Stage One. This is simply because of the unique nature of the iPhone project and its potential to develop as a complete mobile game. With that said, this week primarily reflects the final iteration of the Cataloguing game, simply because, as a team, we've decided that the other prototype would be more interesting and plausible to continue development.
Since the initial idea, the context of the iPhone game has only slightly changed. At this point, my main task is to begin the actual development on the mobile device to ensure that the platform is within our scope. Therefore, most of the ideas still remain the same for the project. The main concentration of gameplay will be represented by a screen containing all of the micro-games, and from there it will zoom in and out of each icon, conducting a short gameplay bit, before exiting and returning to the selection area.
By incorporating a variety of extremely simple and brief games with easily adaptable content, it should be possible to create a gameplay experience that makes use of familiar social media queues to emphasize the rapid multi-tasking people tend to have when accessing their devices. Which, is interesting, because ultimately the game is primarily designed as a fun experience that challenges the player to quickly adapt to randomized micro-games with varying types of difficulties. But, there's also a potential to build a greater message, possibly using the sarcasm of rapid micro-game play and relate it to how we actually manage content on our phones. I know that even I have the tendency to quickly navigate between emails, notifications, messages, and images on-after-another. The rate at which I can do so, quickly picking out information, is definitely something that we could research and examine for the collection of micro-games.
While the prototype is still in development, we did manage to take a paper prototype to QA and acquire some feedback relating to the nature of the current micro-games we had thought of. We also encouraged testers to list any further ideas they might have, or any hesitations with the game style.
Acquiring the Apple license from the programming perspective took quite a bit of time. Fortunately, I was aware that the process would be a hassle. Not only does the license cost $99, but there's an entire process relating to the creation of certificates that needs to be followed. Typically, this must be done on a Mac to ease the process, but I managed to complete the objectives by manually creating the required access files. From there, FlashDevelop provides a simpler connection from project to device.
To start, I currently enabled a simple foundation project that incorporates a larger number of back-end classes that will be useful as development goes onward. I've created a Cycle class to handle the display of icons and selection, and currently a rough demo conveys the Cycle randomly choosing between a few micro-game icons listed on the screen. Next, I plan to implement one or two actual micro-games, and then allow the device to randomly choose between the two in a similar manner. The game will run a micro-game, allowing the player to complete the object, and then zoom back out once more.
This sprint iteration I also completed a few other tasks relating to the Tech Documentation and Disciplinary Review interview. The Tech Documentation took a short while, but was mostly a matter of listing out the project outline pieces and reviewing the potential areas of risk on both projects. The Disciplinary Review was just a meeting with faculty, relating to both programming and production.
With these set, we are gradually heading toward the Stage One Challenging point. While we should be set on Documentation and requirements, it may take an additional week or show to ensure that we pass through the stage. However, the sooner the better, as it means concentrating programming development on one overall game project. Diving between Unity and ActionScript is its own challenge at the moment.