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OddBall Screenshot Saturday #10

10:21 AM July 7, 2012
I'm at Screenshot Saturday number ten already! This week I've been concentrating a bit more on graphics. I finished the fan model and also textured and animated it. I updated the GUI ball buttons a bit, and I created the "GO" button texture that is used to fire the Oddballs into levels. I also started modelling the cannon but that is still a work in progress.

However, the biggest new change I've started working on is the OddBall eyes. Way back in my original design I had planned to give the Oddballs some eyes that convey emotion as they are launched throughout levels (such as glee when first launched, pain when they hit a wall, etc). This was originally planned as a way to give the game a bit more character. However, I later scratched the idea because of a few reasons. For one, I felt my overall semi-realistic theme didn't have room for cartoony character eyes on the Oddballs. But I also wanted to simplify the game so that I could actually finish and release it, which meant cutting some unnecessary features.

Flash forward to last week and I received some great new feedback on my game. I've been attending my local indie game meetups for the past several months. These are weekly meetings where fellow indie game developers in Victoria gather to have a few beers at the pub, talk about the industry, about games, and about our projects. It's a great way to get feedback, to learn, to meet similarly minded folks, and to build a fun community around our passion. Any how, a fellow iPhone developer Jacob Schwartz (who has released a few iPhone games to date) was kind enough to offer some good advice on my current Oddball build.

As with any feedback, you need to take it with a grain of salt. I don't want to get over my head and start adding and changing everything about my game, but I also welcome constructive advice. One of Jacob's suggestions was to make the Oddballs (which are really the main characters of my game) more relatable to the player. Adding eyes to the balls (which was part of my original design) was actually his main suggestion. So I took his advice and thought about it some more. I've come to the conclusion that this is actually an important feature that should never have been cut from my game. So I'm now working on an animated eyeball system within Oddball. The simple tests I've done so far greatly add to the character of the game and give the game more juiciness overall. I thank Jacob for setting me back on the right path with that :).

This week I'll be working on animating the eyeballs and coding the system for these animations. I intend to give each of the 3 Oddballs it's own style (one will be a female, one will be a tough guy, and another will be more of a generic average style). And then of course there will be sound effects and voices for each :)

OddBall #screenshotsaturday #10

This entry posted by Graham in Velvety Couch Games
Tags: Game Development, OddBalls, ScreenshotSaturday