Recruits

Panorunner has attracted some new recruits!!
Just met with Jess from Composing and Ellie from Sound Design! So exciting both of them seem really enthusiastic about the project and were really receptive to some of the more goofy sound ideas I had been working on! yay
As of this update I am about 3/4 of the way through designing the interface which has now grown to have about.... 6 or more screens for different aspects of the game.  The tech side is going great too and with a little push i'm pretty confident I can pull this off.
Cant wait to see what Jess and Ellie produce!
anyway back to designing the tutorial level
bye!

Panorunner Update

Panorunner is getting there! Most of the tech has been built now with some great help from our Master Coding Guru Richard.  I have been working on the art style over the weekend and I think it has come on a long way from the place holder stick figure, coins and stars ("cos its always coins and stars")!

I'm hoping to have a full storyboarded intro (skippable of course :p) that will clue the player into the backstory of the games protagonist.  At the moment i'm gonna leave the story a secret but since the deadline for the project is in 2 weeks time you wont have to wait long to find out :)
Anyway back to it!

Panorunner!

So we have all decided on and presented our ideas for the App Factory project.  I am so glad to see how different everyone's ideas are! Here is the line up atm:

Josh - touch based twister!

Xian - turn based terraforming game.

Ellie - evolving tamagotchi in a jar!

Sam - exploration of depression through 4th person vertical platforming.

Kai - Calvin and Hobbes meets worms.

Alex - Tetris with words.

I am going with an idea Jen had after we attended the indie meet up in London earlier this year.  We developed the idea together and now I'm gonna try and realise it in the next few weeks. So now for the idea:

Panorunner - creating your own platformer using your own photographs.

At the moment I have a prototype with working platformer controls, collectibles, power ups etc next step translate to touch controls.

End of code camp

Code camp is done! An intense few weeks to say the least. We ended with creating functionality and UI for a RTS game Richard built for us. This was by far my most favourite of the projects we did during code camp, with the text based adventure being a close second.

I thought the best part of this last exercise was seeing what everyone chose to add. Most of us added the GUI healthbar, kill tally, etc but after that we started to add all sorts of cool things. Kai created a pause function that changes camera and adds a vignette, Ellie added a collectible etc.

I chose to add a level up mechanics where the main character (red wizard Jonas) would level up to a blue wizard and gain ice magic instead of his standard fire spells. Then over the weekend I added a second scene once the player beats the first 3 orcs.  The character comes upon a long bridge and the last remaining Orc hurls a giant boulder down the bridge. The player has about 3 seconds to either create an ice wall to redirect the boulder or get crushed.  The best part of this by far was building the rag-doll functionality to my character! Seeing them hit by the boulder collapse and get flung off the bridge was surprisingly satisfying!!!

Anyway next stop App Factory! I Hope the difference in the way we approached the end of code camp is reflected in people's design choices for App Factory.