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Devlog 90: Big Fish

Devlog 90: Upcoming Changes:

This week's devlog is an edit of the first announcement I made on Steam.

This week:
-Redid the game presentation at TIG.
-Redid the battle cross.
-Redid the icon.
-Redid the hud.
-Worked on new foe: Mecha Geisha. Not good enough to showcase yet though.
-Tested latest build for bugs.
-Made video for bug fixes for Greg.

Here are the objectives for the upcoming week:

1. Controller Input
Jeff Mann, the programmer for the game is currently working on implementing gamepad support. Since it's game input isn't typing anymore, having gamepad control is the logical choice. Keyboard will, of course, still be supported, but we'd like to make the game input as simple and practical as possible. We'll be bug testing the controller around the end of the week.

2. New Battle Cross
The Battle Cross is simply put the ability selection UI. It's based off a game I really liked growing up, Lufia: Rise of the Sinistrals.

The previous version was done clunky, cramped and just plain not to my liking so I redid it entirely. I had the touch screen in mind I'll admit in order to make it easy for players to make their selection. Here's a comparison screen:



I would say I'm overall pleased with the new look.

3. New HUD
Another thing I've reworked this week is the hud. The previous version was not very readable and "all over the place":



I've reworked everything so that the important elements can be understood at a quick glance (here's the mockup):


We still have some size issues to fix but I think overall it's a lot more elegant.

4. More than just Kanas
Some comments mentioned that the game was only to learn kana. I can understand this was what was seen in the trailer but I added some actual vocabulary in the mockup. You'll find that kanjis will have furigana on top.

The player simply presses the button on his controller and attempts to identify the right answer for "apple" in this case. A right answer racks up your battle score which in turn determines how effective your attack or defense will be.

New trailer

Tony Manfredonia, the composer for the game, is also going to rework the trailer to show more gameplay (this has been one recurrent comment). This was admittedly my first trailer and so it was as imperfect as I expected it to be. The next version will be more focused on gameplay and the strategy involved in STX.

I'm very open to feedback from potential players. I think anyone can have good ideas about just about anything game related without being an actual game developer. I'm interested in your comments, you can be as harsh as you want, if something is sticking out, I'd rather know about it so I can find solutions about it.

P.S.: Thanks to eplipswitch for his proofreading help.