Game Design
After my playtest last week, I made a couple of iterations to improve my core mechanic. Of course I did not make radical changes, but I tried to alter the gameplay, so that it is more fun and less repetitive. One important metaphor that guided this process was the play matrix that we discussed in class last week. As a result, I came up with a couple of ideas for each one of the dimensions in the play matrix. My purpose is that I should be able to move my game design to the desired position in the play matrix by implementing some of the following ideas.
MENTAL
* If the frog jumps on the other side of the fence it should acquire the behavior, but
not perform
*Give a limited number of pills to each player
SKILL
* Add pills such as bombs and mine whose effect is a direct consequence of how the player throws
CHANCE
* Each player gets 5 randomly selected pills in the beginning. If both frogs are still
alive after players finished their pills. Five new pills will be given
* Make most effective pills less probable
PHYSICAL
* Tweak the controls for throwing a pill to make it more challenging.
* Make the pill bouncier
Pill Types
I created a little grid with a description of the pill types that I have so far. You see the grid here.
Implementation
* I added sounds for most game events. I left some events out because I couldn’t find sounds that I like. I found many of my sounds at SoundSnap which is a very good resource for sounds effects. I edited my sounds in one my favorite wvae editors called GoldWave
* I implemented a simple physics-based particle system for explosions and other effects to come
* I implemented the game logic for many pill types
* I tuned the gameplay some more and incorporated some of my new ideas
* Fixed a number of outstanding bugs
* Changed the code, so that all drawing functionality is fully resolution independent. My game can now run in full screen, but I am still keeping this option off because it gets in the way of development
* I made a substantial code clean-up