Greg to Asher | Wed, Oct 12, 2011 at 4:23 PM
Hey this is really fun!

Do you guys wanna go minimalist with it? the rounded corners could be a little more “fun-loving” and whimsical if you wanted, might be a better fit with the attitude you’re going after.

i’d say… you could still go a lot of different angles, but what are your resources? do you have an artist? can you manage the aliased edges on stuff in unity? with the game as it is now, the details matter. the less stuff that’s in the game the more those details will show. So focus on your color scheme, if you go with blocks it might be best to just keep them solid, simple. push the simple if you go for it, resist the urge to add more and stick to your guns, whatever you decide. I do think the game could benefit from an artist, while none of us have the resources that capy does, critter crunch is a good example of where you could take a “grid based” puzzle game. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fj0LnXFAO7g

shit can get real polished/character driven if you want.

i don’t think characters really make sense for this game, but regardless you could go with something more colorful and etc. and i’m not just talking about “colors”. in general the game feels like it’s in the programmer art phase, but a lot of stuff is in there and it’s just waiting for an artist to come in and swap everything and make it look pretty. if it’s something you wanna try on your own, i’d side with a style that’s sparse. focus a lot of time on just picking the right set of colors, then work out from there, keeping it simple with a focus on the details, like anti aliasing and etc.

Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 5:04 PM
allllllllllllllllllllright. i’m back. :)

ridic fishing crunch was crunchy so i needed to be away for a bit. i’m back now though. so hmmm… let me catch up here.

re: menus >> alright cool, thanks for the zip. i’ve noticed that the menus aren’t in a standard res. is that because they are being cutoff or is there some reason for that? 960×640 is what i’m working with as a base. i’d like to get a read on what you’re thinking as far as taking the swipe the word to transition to other parts of the menu system. i’d like that to permeate all menu screens.

i guess right now i’m thinking there are some things i’d like to change about the visual details. now that the blocks are 100% i think the colors are clashing/vibrating so i went with this (attached). i think it still allows for enough differentiation and looks much better. Beyond that there’s a good bit more but i want to make sure that you are ready for that phase. it seems like right now the grid that the blocks are on, the size of the blocks and etc. will determine a lot as far as the menus themselves are concerned. so while it might feel a bit like premature polish, i think we should nail down a grid/blocksize and grid orientation that will flow throughout the whole game that we can build the rest of the game menus on top of. it will make both of our lives a lot easier if we sort of polish that vertical slice of the game.

right now, as far as the grid is concerned, it’s a bit awkward. aesthetically i’d much prefer my original grid, with a hefty margin, however i definitely realize the need to maximize real-estate. I’m going to try and work within those constraints some more and we should probably try and work as closely as possible to get something that we’re both happy with.

basically, i’m looking to get the pipeline as a sort of 1:1 thing, where we’re both aware of the exact measurements of things so the details are exposed so we can finalize the base grid, colors and visual rules and move forward using those to build things out. for instance, right now there is a hay-pixel gap between all block rows. I’m not sure what the case is there, but it’s one of the things we should try and figure out. that way, if i cook up a 960×640 mockup it’s with actual pixels that will be used in the game.

finally, this might not be what you were planning, and that’s fine as well. if you’d like me to take more of a direction/consultation roll in this then i understand that, but i strongly suggest that we focus down on the details to make this game special. it matters. apple has taste when it comes to the visuals and they aren’t going to feature something that doesn’t look crisp/professional/polished. we don’t have a lot of ammo to throw at the player so the way we make it look professional is with carefully crafted details.

alright,
so yea, i definitely think showing apple a build would be great. My contact is more of a development contact so she’s actually most interested in alpha/beta builds to talk about new features apple is pushing and so on. it’s a good idea for sure to keep up the dialog as that means we will be in her mind in the months leading up to release. hopefully you can build a direct contact with her about puzzlejuice and keep that up post-puzzlejuice. The hope is that when it comes time to release she can pass the word onto someone that has the power to offer puzzlejuice up as a potential feature.

in general the game is really shaping up and coming together. i can’t wait to keep pushing and making this puppy sing. :)

Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 5:12 PM
here’s her info to get her setup on testflight: [REDACTED]

Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 6:31 PM
here’s a 55px grid (actually has 14 rows, just fixed that in the ai file). but yea, there are smaller blocks here but i think it just feels really cramped at 60px blocksize. plus more room for UI and stuff like that…

Fri, Jan 6, 2012 at 10:12 AM
yo, just pulled down the build, it’s downloading now. from what i gather the next couple of days are going to be a hellride?

i think it might be useful to re-evaluate the audit as there are probably some more important things we could focus on than a lot of what’s in there. for instance, per the icon colors vibrating, i changed the secondary colors (bottom shading) to avoid that. also, i noticed that when i lost (maybe it was a quirk) that there didn’t seem to be an explosion or a core meltdown of some kind like i was expecting.

also, and maybe this is like the fifth time you’ve told me, but what about the options menu?

playing now, looking really great! love the button transition, the shadow change, everything!

i’d say priority from what i’ve seen (and most of these are probably “no duh greg”):

i saw you mentioned you added the juice effects but i’m having trouble picking them out
the freeze seems to be the old freeze effect
old icons replaced with new
options menu? (let me know what you want in it and i’ll mock it up)
switching those secondary block colors
replacing my orange arrows from the original glowey orange ones
an explodey/CHOMPCHOMPy transition when losing
word list spacing on game over/pause screen :)

let me know if there’s anything i can do to ease your workload on this stuff. i’m happy to do it and it seems like to hit our deadline it might be necessary.