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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
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January Update |
Posted by pixy | Filed under BubbleTouch, DevBlog
Hi !
We are continuing developing BubbleTouch and we have made a lot of progress.
We have finally completed the design and the main specification of the game, defining the composition of the levels, its numbers and a little bit the story behind the game. If you go on the Bubble Touch page you will find a little explanation about the game and its planned features.
The game has been divided into 5 different planets:
- Blue Planet
- Green Planet
- White Planet
- Yellow Planet
- Red Planet
After clicking on a play button a “planet selection menu” will appear:
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Then after clicking on a planet you can browse between levels. Each planets have a map which is divided into 9 different pieces. A single piece represent a level, and when you have complete a level a part of this map will be shown on screen:
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Another important step has been done on the game status (that handle and store the levels completed and the scores) which is now persistent (if the player quit the game the status will be saved and restore the next time he/she launch BubbleTouch).
We have decided to don’t develop any kind of “save game slot”, we use directly a single “slot” which is automatically save and restored.
We are aiming to finish and make playable a single planet (9 levels) in order to test the game and add more funny features.
See you soon 
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Bonus Card: Star |
Posted by pixy | Filed under Bonus, BubbleTouch, DevBlog
Tags: BubbleTouch
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First screenshots |
Posted by bugman | Filed under BubbleTouch, DevBlog
Here some screenshots of the current version! Some gfx is still missing (font, menù item, etc.)
Tags: BubbleTouch
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Week-end updates |
Posted by pixy | Filed under BubbleTouch, DevBlog
Design and GFX:
During this week-end we have implemented the first bonus for BubbleTouch. Soon we will post some bonus cards which describe briefly each bonus. This card will be probably putted inside the game in a “bonus gallery” browsable by the user. Obviously, during the game new bonus will appear inside the levels and displayed on the gallery.
We think that the game will be more funny and playble if there is a bigger number of bonus.
I have preparared the GFX for approx 6-7 bonus, while only the classic muliplier bonus ( x2, x3, x4) has been currently designed. This multiplier bonus appear in a level when the player increment the sequence of consecutive bubble of the same colour touched (popped).
Coding :
We are now able to load a single level from an XML file thanks to cocoa NSXMLParser class. In this manner it will be easy to create the entire level pack. A first implementation of the multiplier bonus has been done quite successfully
Until now we haven’t post any image of the game ! I hope that my lazy brothers we will do that shortly.
I would like to post also some video too. So, stay tuned !
Tags: Bubble Touch
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Hardware used for Bubble Touch |
Posted by bugman | Filed under BubbleTouch, DevBlog
Hi All!
This is image resume the hardware used to develop BubbleTouch, in a few words:
- 2 Ipod Touch 2nd Generation
- 1 Mac mini (PowerPC)
- 1 Macbook (Intel)
- 17′ Benq Monitor
- an Hp Notebook for Gfx & music
Tags: BubbleTouch
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Holidays updates + programs used to develop BubbleTouch |
Posted by pixy | Filed under BubbleTouch, DevBlog
Hello everyone !
During this period a lot of new stuff has been added to BubbleTouch !
First of all we have a first complete level (even with some feature missing) workable and fully playable !
Since this is my first post I will explain briefly what are my duties: I’m a C/C++ coder but for BubbleTouch I’m responsible especially for graphics and Music/SFX even if in the spare time I will help (a lot ) my brothers on writing code.
These are the programs that we currently use during the development of BubbleTouch (on Windows and Mac platform):
- GIMP for some retouch of 2D images and to compose the texture atlas of the game.
- Inkscape for creating the bubble touch sprites.
- MilkyTracker for creating the music
Soon we will add images and explain better what we have done during these holidays, so stay tuned !
We hope to add some videos too !!
PiXy / PixMapBrothers
Tags: BubbleTouch
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Bubble Touch – November updates |
Posted by admin | Filed under BubbleTouch, DevBlog
In the first month we start to build a testbed with Box2D and Iphone SDK.
Here some screenshots:
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BugMaN work on bitmapped Font while PiXy make some gfx for the bubbles.
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Tags: BubbleTouch
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Hello world! |
Posted by admin | Filed under BubbleTouch, DevBlog
Hi all!
This is first post of a Diary that follow the development of the first our games called Bubble Touch!
- Ipod Touch
Yesterday we have bought two amazing Ipod Touch 8 Gb 2nd Generation for test our application made with Apple Iphone SDK.
