Lucky 7 Monster & Music, and the iPhone Ocarina.

12/12/2008 by admin.

Hello everyone,

  It’s getting closer to Christmas now (two weeks and counting) and it’s starting to get really cold now, which is fine except I painted the cupboard and for almost the whole week, the bedroom has stunk of paint fumes, which means I’ve had to sleep with the window open the whole week and it gets really cold during the nights.

  Anyway, I’ve been working really hard this week on Lucky 7 and we have done a fair bit this week.  I’m finding that having a separate room to work in really help you to focus on the work a lot more and I highly recommend any one that has to work at home, if you can find a space that you can dedicate just as your working area (even if it’s just a small cupboard or box room, just make sure that it’s only used for work), try it and you’ll be amazed at the difference it can make to your work flow and the increased focus you seem to have.

  I’ve also been playing around with some musical instruments for the iPhone.  The main one been an Ocarina simulator for the phone, where you actually have to blow into the microphone and press the four different buttons to produce a tune, it’s really good fun and it is guaranteed to impress everyone that sees it.  Also, if you go to their website, they are hundreds of musical sheets for you to download and learn.  If you have an iPhone, give it a try as it’s only a dollar (59p).  It’s nice to be at work, trying to fix something while you have your mate sat behind you trying to play “Fairy Tale in New York” and “Silent Night” on an iPhone Ocarina.  Now that’s Christmas

Weekending 12/12/08

Lucky Seven:

  It’s been a really good week for Lucky 7 this week.  First of the bat is the example music tracks for the game which Tommy sent through.  I basically asked him for something cute, but with a slight horror feel to it and send him the current build of the game to look at and after only a couple of days, he sent back four examples for tunes and I’ve got to say that they are all excellent and are just what I was looking for. 

  For my bit, I’ve had a really good week working on Lucky 7 and I feel like I’ve done a fair bit of work on it.  I’ve finished the ghost model off (see picture (I’m calling him Nigel, as he looks like a guy I used to work with called Nigel)) and I’ll got nearly all the animations done (I know that I will need to do more, but I’m waiting until I know what other animations will be needed).

  I’m also working on mocking up the intro / title screen.  This includes designing the game logo and title (which is one of the reasons the Lucky 7 page has remained blank for so long).  My master plan is to just have a nice cartoon style intro which flows smoothly from the engine splash screen, into the intro and finally ends at the title screen.  I’m mocking it up using Flash, so I can quickly add, edit and change elements if needed.  It took me a couple of hours to remember how to use Flash as I have not used Flash for a couple of years, but once I got in to the flow, it seems to be the quickest was of doing it and it allows me to send examples out to the rest of the team for comments.  It also helps to have an example music track to work to as well, so you get the full atmosphere of graphics and music.

  You can see the Lucky 7 logo in the Ghost picture by the way.  It went through a lot of different design ideas, but in the end I think this simple design is the best and the little coloured cubes in the logo by the way are really important to the game, as is the order of the blocks (just if you where wondering what they were for, they do mean something (that’s pretty deep design for me as I normally throw things in until it looks nice)).

  Just got an e-mail as I write this, that Isaac has almost converted the mock up Flash animation to TGB, which is a LOT faster then I expected it to take, but saying that, Isaac is un-naturally fast =)

Shuffle Blocks:

  Well I finally got the current build to work on my machine and it was due to a corrupt install of the various XNA installs on my machine.  There’s still a fair bit of work to be done on the game, but the basic game is there and it’s fun to play.

  We are still talking (Dave and myself) about what’s the best approach for the game is.

Right, that’s it for me this week and I’m sure that there’s going to be a lot more next week.  So have a good week and I hope I will see you next week.

Thanks,

Mike.

www.badbumble.com

Posted in Shuffle Blocks, Current Game Development, Lucky 7 Development Diary, Blogroll | No Comments »