Title: Concept Tilt
Release: July 2017
Initial Development Period: 6 Months
Development Status: Completed
Availability: Android™ Devices
Tagline: Tilt to Win
Release: July 2017
Initial Development Period: 6 Months
Development Status: Completed
Availability: Android™ Devices
Tagline: Tilt to Win
Concept Tilt took way longer than I ever could have thought it would to complete. In order to make sure I included everything I wanted to and kept myself organized I used a to-do list which I've learned to always do because it really did help. Frankly the most difficult part was designing levels and as a result of making this I've realised that making stages for a game like this isn't a strong point for me. Setting each of the worlds to a theme and having a definite number of levels I think was a mistake and after a handful of levels I felt bored and wanted to move onto something different. Funnily enough I wouldn't let my self skip levels and work on a later level which eventually I branded frankly a silly limitation and this is when I reorganized the levels, fixing the difficulty curve, and refocused the scope of the whole project down to 60 levels. Adjusting the difficulty really did help a lot as I was able to design more introductory levels which were less complicated than something later on that needed to present a fair challenge.
On a related note, the endless mode was originally going to be completely randomly generated, but creating an algorithm that would always ensure a path for the player was sloppy and I felt that I could make more interesting paths for the player by having it be procedural.
On a related note, the endless mode was originally going to be completely randomly generated, but creating an algorithm that would always ensure a path for the player was sloppy and I felt that I could make more interesting paths for the player by having it be procedural.
GUI done RIGHT!
Looking back at Concept Core, the difference in art style and menu organization is much cleaner. The original intent was to have no labels under the buttons and for the pictures in them to make what they were clear, but after getting impressions from some of my friends on campus (this was again primarily developed during my time in college), the button labels were left on by default. Watching the trailer below there's a huge difference in overall presentation.
The most difficult bug for me to fix the cornering. Because of the way that collision is detected, the "circle" can get caught on corners of blocks because the pixels when the puck would try to move into the block, the game would stop it so it wouldn't go in to the block, but there was no set way for the game to make the puck to go AROUND it. Eventually the fix was the check each corner, see if the corresponding pixels were occupied by the puck, then nudge it in the appropriate direction. This check is only done on blocks within a certain radius around the puck.
Many of the features such as volume control, toggle settings, player customization, and online functionality were implemented much quicker than any of the other projects now that I finally have a strong understanding of how they work in-engine. This let's me focus more on the gameplay and how to design around these features while making the core of the game, for instance pausing. For me this is a very complete game and I feel that a lot of the attention to detail I put in to it shows.
Many of the features such as volume control, toggle settings, player customization, and online functionality were implemented much quicker than any of the other projects now that I finally have a strong understanding of how they work in-engine. This let's me focus more on the gameplay and how to design around these features while making the core of the game, for instance pausing. For me this is a very complete game and I feel that a lot of the attention to detail I put in to it shows.
Last Update: 07/05/2017