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Progress Update |
Posted by pixy | Filed under BubbleTouch, DevBlog
Hi ! I would like to share with you ome BubbleTouch progress.
During these first months of 2010 we have:
- Rewritten the code for background music and sound effects
- Updated Box2D to the last revision (r57)
- Finished Bonus implementation
- Worked on performance issues
- Re-designed some menu
In other words, we have almost finished the code.
The next things to do are
- level design
- testing
- graphics & music improvements
We hope to finish as soon as possible, we have a lot of idea for new projects… so stay tuned !
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Merry Christmas ! |
Posted by pixy | Filed under BubbleTouch, DevBlog
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Akai LPK25 |
Posted by pixy | Filed under BubbleTouch, DevBlog
For Christmas I give a useful present to my brother: an Akai LPK25 keyboard. We will use it (me too) to compose our game music. It is quite small and portable, usb-powered and with an useful arpeggiator ! I immediately configure MilkyTracker with MIDI input and start making music with it :
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Bubble Touch First Video |
Posted by admin | Filed under BubbleTouch, DevBlog
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BubbleTouch November update |
Posted by pixy | Filed under BubbleTouch, DevBlog
A short update about BubbleTouch, during November:
- PiXy bought an unibody white macbook and he is starting developing on Mac too !
- BubbleTouch editor is almost finished, now for each level you can also choose for bubble size, and some physic bubble parameters (restitution and friction), you can also create the environemnt positioning fixed block.
- We have set a 1st December milestone to have the first world completed (design + code)
We would like to release the game for Christmas even if there are a lot of things to do yet, new images and possibly, a first video will be posted when we have something more finished and polished.
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We are still alive ! |
Posted by pixy | Filed under BubbleTouch, DevBlog
Just a few line to say “Hey, we are still alive!”. We are very busy in the previous months, but we are ready to make the last efforts to finish BubbleTouch !!
We would like to release a demo video soon, to show the menus and the main concept gameplay, so stay tuned !
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May Updates |
Posted by pixy | Filed under BubbleTouch, DevBlog
Bubble Touch Level Editor
During May I’m working on the Bubble Touch Level Editor, it is a multi-platform (thanks Qt 
) GUI application that allows us to design visually a level, test the level behaviour and made some adjustments on the fly. It is also save Levels in XML format ready to be used directly inside Bubble Touch. It will help us a lot during the level design phase of Bubble Touch to speed up testing and level creation. Moreover we can create Level both on Mac and using my PC Laptop, or under Ubuntu/Linux, without any issues.
SFX and Music
After testing and reading a lot of different solution for having multiple sound and a background music for Bubble Touch, BugMaN select OpenAL to play SFX and I must admit that it works great, without any delays and slowdown on game performances !
Soon, we would like to post some videos to show the game ! So, stay tuned !
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Bubble Touch bonus ! |
Posted by pixy | Filed under BubbleTouch, DevBlog
I have finished the first graphics draft for all the bonus: currently we have 26 bonus to develop !! We have decided to call it Special Bubble or simply Bubbles.
They have a lead role in our game, so probably they may change, and we may think to add other bonus. Did you remember Bubble Bobble ? There was a huge number of bonus, I miss it !
In the game menu we will add a Bubble Gallery: everytime you found a new Bubble, this bonus will be added in the gallery.
In the meantime, enjoy this picture !
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February Update |
Posted by pixy | Filed under BubbleTouch, DevBlog
During February Bubble Touch has not evolved as expected since we are focus our development on Menus and in order to fix code, simplify it and make it more readable and reusable.
Game Menu:
We are finally complete the design of the game menu including the ones used to access to levels and play it. As described in previous posts after the user click on the play button, he/she can choose a planet, and hence a level to play with.
We are trying to create menu that are simply to understand and use it immediately. Personally I think that an iPhone game must be immediate to play and understand without any further explanation. After dowload a game from the App Store I would like to immediately play with it and have fun, without losing time to understand what can I do. The first 2/3 minutes of playing are extremely important especially for Bubble Touch which wants to be a game that can be played even for some minutes per day.
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The Planet selection Menu is extremely simple, any reachable planets is displayed and animated, while the not reachable planets shows only its shadow (or shape):
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After select a planet the user select a level in a map clicking on a piece of the map. This menu is not fully completed and some GFX has to be re-done, especially the graphics connected with the map.
After clicking on a reachable piece of map (i.e. a Level) on the left appear the level options: if a level has been played and completed the highscore will be shown. To simplify the visualization of the highscore and give a better idea of the score we are using stars:
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We are also working on the result page, that gives the information about level after the user has finish to play with it.
A WIP screenshot:
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The level objective screen (menu) has to be redesign in order to be more immediate to understand (we are working on it in this week).
Code refactoring
We are spending a lot of times in refactor the internal code of Bubble Touch in order to be more OO and more readable and easy to use (even for the future projects).
We are also cleaning up the code to have some little performance improvements, but we will focusing on speed at the end of the project.
PVR Texture and Texture Atlas
Bubble Touch nows can load PVR Texture and have a strong Texture Atlas support. We use a lot of atlas for the game and the menu, hence we spend some times on improved the use of atlas and make it simpler.
March Plans:
On March we would like to have a first Planet fully completed and in general we would like to improve:
- Sound SFX support
- Level gameplay: bonus, malus, new features
If you have any idea about a cool features that can improve the gameplay, feel free to comment this post !
See you soon,
PiXy / PixMapBrothers
Tags: BubbleTouch
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PixMapBrothers uses Goplan |
Posted by pixy | Filed under BubbleTouch, DevBlog
Today we have moved our notes, bug tracking and tasks for BubbleTouch on Goplan.
Goplan is an online project management and collaboration tool that allows us to manage our todo list, divide out tasks and tracking the bug encountered during the development.
We are using the free account which allows to manage 2 projects and, for the moment, fits completely our needs. We likes the possibility to divide a task into several subtasks that is exactly what we do when we put some goal to reach.Starting from the goal to reach (i.e. complete the level selection menu) we identify all the micro task needed to reach it.
Previously to manage our todo list and tasks we are using RTM (Remeber The Milk) which also have a lot of cools features like tags, and weekly planner. We still continue to use it, together with Goplan, in order to catch the best features for both application.
Goplan will be more used as a bug tracking system, and a place to add notes, comments on tasks, while RTM will be used to print out a weekly planner and organize better tasks.
If the next version of Goplan, currently in development (Goplan 2.0) will have supports for tags, possiblity to assign a task to multiple users, and other cool features, we will probably drop RTM.
A mandatory screenshot of BubbleTouch tasks on Goplan, due for this week-end:
 BubbleTouch on GoPlan |
PiXy / PixMapBrothers
Tags: Bubble Touch
