Last week the local superhero and I met with some of the designers to pitch our personal projects and explain the group project some more. The placid dinosaur was on a business trip, as dinos do, but checked in via our team Slack.
Notes from that meeting:
- The personal projects put the devs in the unique position of being both client and collaborator. I think this is a new concept for some of our group.
- Communicating visually, with links to apps or screenshots or in person demonstrations will help the process.
- Not everyone is comfortable with Slack as a communication tool, not everyone is familiar with InVision as a prototyping tool. We are all learning.
- Clear requests/requirements and examples will be the best bet.
- No designers are currently assigned, waiting on them to talk amongst themselves, then we will divide and conquer!
Sound Maze Progress
I am about a 25% of the way through the Cartoon Smart Maze Games tutorial. I can place SKNodes on the canvas, recognize gestures and have created a player/hero class. I have a working hero atlas which is animating through several frames.
I like the teaching audio and progression quite a bit, but all videos of programming/typing need closer focus on the active pane. Please don’t waste my smaller screen with sidebars and whitespace from a larger screen.
Additionally, if you are recording a presentation of ‘live’ coding, please increase the font size. I’ve been zooming in on the hd video to see what’s going on, but that makes it more difficult to pause and rewind.
Some takeaways:
- CGPointZero is a shortcut for (0.0,0.0)
- Every SKSpriteNode can have a parent. you can move/animate everything on the screen at once by moving/animating just that parent node. (this reminds me of my ancient Flash developing days)
- I keep getting this error, but it doesn’t seem to stop me from successfully building/running my code. It may be a remnant of an earlier version of Xcode. I’m ignoring it for now.
CUICatalog: Invalid Request: requesting subtype without specifying idiom
- Spent some time discussing the error and some other ideas about the game with the local superhero (who is also planning a game for a personal project). He had this suggestion regarding animation atlases:
You should consider using reverseAction() for the last part of the array. This will help with longer animations. Animate 1-3 then reverse it.
Other game thoughts:
- Use a Triad for sound feedback – Three note chords consisting of a root, third, and fifth. Perhaps each sound detail be a valid direction choice?
- Use Tollways… gates between areas that require a Bell sound mini-game or have some other puzzle element.
- I poked around some assets I bought over the holidays looking for some basic graphics/sounds to prototype with.
- Things I learn for this game keep inspiring me for another one I started last semester. I keep tucking away those ideas for later pondering.
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