First of all, I should introduce the original team. We had just 3 people in Seed Games, me, Scott and DJ. Though they both have not been involved in the past developments in any real way, I am hopeful that they will have roles in the next development. Especially DJ, as it could be his idea that we base the next game on.
Back to the history of Seed Games and my personal experiences whilst learning to program. Were up to the point that I have decided to learn Open GL ES - exclusively because I didnt know better nor did I really have a clue how UI Kit could be used to develop games. For those who like to spend money on books, Beginning iPhone Game Development (another book from Apress) is a nice little place to start. Granted, the vast majority of it is about Open GL ES and Quartz 2D. Not too much UI Kit (enough however to get you going!) but since Open GL ES is something that you will eventually come to learn, its well worth purchasing.
So, with the tutorials on 71Squared blog, I begun to learn Open GL ES. It really wasnt going in. I lacked experience with If statements, for loops - both of which popped up frequently. I had never seen (or taken in) the 'dot' syntax. I had no idea how object interacted with each other....
It was a nightmare. I had, in honesty failed to understand Objective C in any real depth. The correct thing to do would have been to create something with UI Kit. I again, ignored this and bought Mike Daleys book. In fact, I bought it when it was in the testing stages so the code I was reading clearly could have been improved (and it has since the book has been released). Its called Learning IOS Game Programming: A Hands-on Guild to Building Your First iPhone Game.
I spent a while reading this book (A couple of months maybe)... Had a nice introduction to Open GL ES but that was about it. It will be helpful when it comes to learning Open GL ES (Maybe in uni) but I couldnt exactly set out and create my own game engine from the content... yet.
Even though the time spent perhaps could have been spent better elsewhere, I still maintain the book did me a lot of good. I finally got my head around OOP (Object Orientated programming) concepts! I saw a good amount of loops and decision statements that I had gained some valuable experience. I had seen how the foundation framework works (Strings, arrays etc). All in all, great experiences. Even though it had taken a while, I now felt confident that I could produce a game.
I used the game engine from the book and began my first game - Burger Toss. Essentially you flick food to the customer who wanted it. Here are a few pictures:
PIC 1: Here you see the game screen. The player would use his finger to flick the food upwards. I actually though the game graphics were pretty good... Not everyones cup of tea but since im not graphically minded in anyway, this was the best of the (royalty free) images on the internet.
I should mention a few features. The people blink (as you can see with the left customer) which I thought was a cool feature. The mouths also move when they are eating too. Both of these were terribly hard to implement.
PIC 2: Here is the Open GL ES based options screen. It would be easier to use UI Kit but since It was getting close to the end of the project, I just wanted to get it finished. Infact, it could have been alot worse.
PIC 3: This is the main menu. Again, the guy here has a blinking animation to keep things a little less plain.
PIC 4: Here you can see how I borrowed a scoring style based of call of duty.
PIC 5: Here shows the burger being 'flicked'. Its spinning and getting smaller as it moves across the screen to make the game take on a semi 3D look and feel.
Burger Toss had 3 game modes. Endless (shown above). Essentially you play until you run out of lives (a feature added after these pictures were taken). You scored points by flicking foods to the right people... the more you did in a row, the bigger score multiplier. It was a basic game mode which the other two were built upon.
Time attack mode gave you 90 seconds to score as many points as possible. The quicker you get the food to the correct person, the more points you got. It was fairly cool actually.
Countdown mode was my personal favourite. You were given a 30 second (It was subject to change, today I would have made it about 15 seconds) and that began to countdown. Each correct flick would add extra time to the countdown timer. Imagine as you get down to the last few seconds, all that frantic flicking!!!
All three game modes had the option to be played on easy mode, or hard mode. Hard mode differed by one feature. The customers 'needs' changed every few seconds. For example, the guy on the left one moment could 'need' a muffin. Moments later, he needs a burger! This mode never let you settle down in to a routine. Once again, I was proud.
I had even coded in support for Game Center. I had the leader boards set up... and was about to add in some achievements and then, disaster struck.
Now, constantly in IT (in school, in the work place... everywhere when computers are involved) you are told to back up your data... Well, I hadnt for a few weeks despite the warnings I had been given - My mac would simply freeze up on occasions. Infact, If I was a little less lazy, I would have had a fresh install of the OS. It didnt feel right.
So one evening, my mac froze and I switched it off... Only to be greeted by the horrible sight of a corrupted hard drive. There perhaps was a way to salvage things (and boy I did try to find it) but the hope faded when I accidentally deleted my Windows partition. A reformat followed and the only back up I had, was one completely out of date.
I therefore canned the project indefinitely. 4 months of my time effectively wasted. (though I do have the latest version on my iPod touch so it is part of my portfolio) One day I may go back and finish it, perhaps releasing it as it is for free (Still needs a bit of work - at the moment I have no motivation to complete the work). One consolation is that I begun the current project soon after. Which I should have been doing a few months before.
Therefore a lesson to learn. Back up your data on to an external source!!!! If you have a mac, perhaps time machine is the way to go.
So that brings me to the end of the second post. The third one will finish off the story and introduce my current project.
Dan
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