Can't Seem to Stop

I know I said I was taking a break this week to handle other matters, but with the holiday and the few day's off from work I couldn't resist. Just having too much fun.

Bad me, I went into this week without any weekly goals (other than not working on the game). So from that stand point I guess I failed. I think I split my hours between programming and design about half and half this week. From the programming side I created a method to fade screens in, added enemy ships moving through the water, fixed the player's controls, added 'gravity' to the player sub and did a good deal of refactoring of code tidying up things. Names of many things to changed to support multiplayer play and I made a gameScreen class to make it easier to make screens like the splash screen, title screen, and game over screens. I also dropped some basic values and display for the in-game UI elements.

From the design side I wrapped up version one of the player sub, called the "Manta", which resembles the shape found in the game logo. It was a tough decision whether to go with hand painted art, or 3D rendered art. I actually really like the look of the painted background so we're sticking with a hand painted look for all the art elements.

Here's the final art, many times larger than what you'll see in the game but I felt the extra details didn't hurt.

From Development of "Deep Blue"

Hopefully, by the end of this weekend I'll have an update video for "Week 3".

"Manta" concept art

I thought I'd go ahead and post the latest player ship sketches. The ship, tentatively called the "Manta", was obviously inspired by the underwater dynamics of a manta ray. It seats two people and is propelled by a central turbine on the underside of the ship and twin rotating turbines on each wing.

From Development of "Deep Blue"

From Development of "Deep Blue"

Large lights run along the front edge of the wings which are essential for deep sea visibility.

Initially I had a "tail" at the back of the ship that acted like a rudder, but with the twin rotating turbines I didn't see manuverability as a problem.

Holiday Break

Unfortunately, with the holidays coming up, and the fact that I'm in need of a little cash "Deep Blue" is going to have to be put on hold temporarily while I hit a couple of illustrations.

It's a little disappointing since I feel things were rolling along at a nice pace. Hopefully stepping away won't handicap me too much once I get a chance to start up again.

I'll go ahead and post the ship concept sketches as well as the new title screen and main menus.

Week 2 Summary

Last week I put together a 3 page initial treatment for "Deep Blue" outlining the key game mechanics. I designed a preliminary logo for the game and carried it over to a new title screen. I designed the "How to Play" modal window. I was able to make a lot of progress on the player sub, but nothing really solid yet for the enemy subs.

From a programming standpoint I discovered the source of my instant movement on the player sub...I'd left an initial velocity test variable. I was able to drop in some testing text into the game screen so I can easily output different variables and watch their values as I play. Very helpful for testing. Even better, the test text display is a part of a defined #test mode in code so I can display them or not display them simply by commenting out a single line.

The ability to display a few variables on the screen has helped me narrow down a couple of bugs and I feel confidant that I'm very close to resolving the stretching issue with the splash and title screens as well as fixing the sub controls which are still a little off.

The bad news is, with the holidays coming up the need for cash may mean that "Deep Blue" gets sidelined for a bit so I can work on some commissioned illustrations.

All-in-all, I was only able to put about 10 hours of work in last week, which is a little less than I'd hoped for.