The past 2 weeks have been tough. During that time, there’s been little to no progress on Turf as my family priorities have taken priority. Well, that and I signed up to author a micro technical manual on Web Audio…

The good news is that those distractions are in the past and I’m fully focused on developing Turf to completion.

New  features added include multiple difficulty levels and multiple control schemes. Some other minor changes include better support for tablets and a minor face-lift to the the in-game art.

With that said, the update did not proceed exactly as planned.

Performance is still an issue and the game still exhibits wonky rendering and/or crashes on some Android smartphones, namely the HTC Desire and the Galaxy S3.

I plan to address those critical issues in the next update.

Despite the setback, I’m quite happy with the progress so far. The difficulty level setting in combination with  multiple control schemes offer various avenues for improving the user experience. In addition, I’m currently looking into updating the game art to improve game feedback and to up the visual quality

Expect to hear more about this before the week is out.

The ‘accelerometer’ control scheme worked as planned – the ship’s direction is controlled through the accelerometer while the ship’s thrust is controlled by a button. In my opinion, it’s a nice alternative to the default control scheme.

The ‘fluid’ control scheme is another matter altogether…

The original concept for the ‘fluid’ control scheme is that the direction pad is dragged along by the player’s finger movement so that returning to the neutral pad position is straightforward. This also meant that players could put their finger down anywhere on the screen and the d-pad would materialize centered at the touch point. Unfortunately, the game requires precision thrusting and having the said d-pad control both direction and thrust is like using a dinner knife to perform precision surgery.

In an effort to rescue the control scheme, I separated the thrust control from the direction control thereby adding a new button in the process. To my surprise, this seemed to fix the precision control issue. Of course, it could just as easily be fatigue playing tricks on my mind…

I can’t wait to release the update and find out which control scheme is the most popular…

Hyper Grav's 'fluid' control scheme has the direction pad controlling the ship's direction and a thrust button controlling thrust. Could this be one button too many?

Today, I put the finishing touches to the Options Screen (amongst other things).

Hyper Grav now has enough user configurable settings to warrant adding an Options Screen!

Remember in my previous blog when I talked about players being able to enable/disable level timers? That functionality is part of the (brand new) game difficulty setting. Here’s a brief description of each difficulty level:

• Practice
  There are no level timers, plus the ship’s armor is beefed up. Just don’t expect earn 3 star rankings upon completion of the level. For that, you’ll need to play at the Normal difficulty at least.
• Normal
  The level timer makes its dreaded appearance. Fortunately, the ship’s armor remains beefed up so players should be able to get through some of the… hmm… tighter spots in the level.
• Hard
  This is Hyper Grav’s original difficulty setting. Yes, it’s true – I may have tweaked the difficulty level a wee bit too high in the first version. It’s what happens when a developer lives and breathes the product 24/7 for 3 months straight.

Now, it’s back to the task of hooking up all the game options…

Enjoy.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/6978-SimShitty

Hyper Grav first official update is slated for release next week. I’m hopeful that this update will address a slew of known device-specific glitches. In addition, expect to see the following new features in the game…

Improved performance

The physics CPU load in some of the later levels may produce choppy frame rates on some devices. The physics systems upgrade will hopefully address this.

Improved control scheme

• Motion sensor control scheme
  The direction pad is replaced with tilt sensors and a thrust button. ’nuff said.
• Floating direction stick
  Just plunk your finger down anywhere on the direction pad side of the screen and the direction pad will move to your finger. This should make it easier to control during those frenetic combat moments!
• Left/right control swap
  Do you prefer having the buttons on the right and the direction pad on the left? Soon, you can have it your way.

‘No timer’ option

No more level timers to make your life miserable!  Now users will just have to contend with the physics, the ever dwindling fuel supply, and the re-spawning turrets (if you haven’t encountered these… you will)

A big shout out to Daniel Stevens and Dave Root for their feedback. Extra thanks goes out to Daniel for his assistance in troubleshooting the game on the HTC Desire. And last but not least, a big thank you to Dave for his continued support and encouragement. This update’s for you, Dave!

Now, back to the development slog…

Enter Typescript.

Typescript is, in its own words, “…a typed superset of JavaScript that compiles to plain JavaScript”.

I’ve been playing around with it since this morning and I really like what I see.  Unlike Coffeescript, Typescript is just plain Javascript with added type declarations, notations and keywords. As a result, the relationship between the source Typescript and the output Javascript is transparent.

Expect deeper posts on Typescript in the future.

Oh, and if you have a chance, do check out Kibble Games’ Millenium Chronicles. It’s best described as a unique blend of RPG and social game mechanics with a web comic. It’s worth checking out just for its compelling story line.

My name is Andy and I draw stuff. This is my first blog post ever. I have been developing video games for over a decade, and what a savage merciless trade it is. A career that is measure in pain and loss…dire health, lack of nutrition and depraved rest… BUT it’s not all grim… Though the body has long since perished the heart still beats with passion for making these crazy things.

The goal of my blog is to explain my approach and process for art and design, if not for what I do right then for what I did wrong.

I really hope that you will like our games.

Thanks for visiting.

I’ve been in the games industry for 15+ years and it’s not often that I’m bowled over, but Max Polhill has done just that. Being a title’s sole developer and shipping it is a grand achievement in and of itself, but accomplishing this at age 14 is just plain incredible.

If you have a chance, do check out his app – It’s a fun little puzzler with a merciless level of difficulty. You can also find the link to his developer blog in my blog roll.

Screenshots from ‘Stellar Alien’