Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Gridiron Solitaire #150 (starting a new number sequence here): Stuff

Example one of stuff:


As part of the "sexifying" of Gridiron Solitaire, Fredrik is redesigning the interface screens. The reason this looks so staggeringly better than the original is because I designed the originals. We both want to move the game from the 1950s-era nostalgia into more recent times, and this is an example of the more streamlined look.

Here's a second example:


Note the cohesion between the two screens--very, very nice. There's also going to be a tab to move to a second screen where custom weather profiles and a few other new features can be selected.

I don't know how other people make games, but I tend to to have a process where I find the weakest thing  and try to make it better. So on the in-game screen, I felt at one point that the event messages were the weakest part of the game, and I spent a week improving them. A few months ago, the team history page was the weakest area of the game, so the team museum concept was born.

I've repeated that cycle dozens of times, and right now, there's no question that next on the list are the interface screens and the card decks. And it's fun. I'm going to enjoy playing the game even more when this is done, and I'm hoping everyone else will, too.

Putting in the new interface screens, for me, is going to be much less complicated than coding new functionality. Mostly, I'll be repositioning elements against the new background screen, and that's much less work than starting from scratch.

Work on the scoreboard/in-game changes are still proceeding. I'd like to drop this as a content stun-bomb reward, though, so I want to deploy it all at once. That means I have a little time to prepare as Fredrik continues to work through the interface screens. Plus, there are only three or four final card poses for the new deck (out of thirteen), and that will be part of the new content, so there's a bit more time there.

In the meantime, I'm going to use Unity for "Hockey Superstar Adventure!" Lots of support available online, plus there's a plug-in for Visual Studio (which is huge for me, because I am very familiar with Visual Studio now).

That's going to be a second ton of work, but after doing GS, I'm dumb enough to assume that a ton of work is just work, one ounce at a time.

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