Time is relative!

I’ve decided to restart some my old works. It was a little time I dont’ touch them! And now I can see HOW MUCH TIME!!!!

I’ve started my project back in 2008: at the time in my ‘plan’ the ETA was defined in (at least) Xmax 2009; then I moved to the next year (2010).

I read in the source code that my last ‘change’ in it was in 2012…. (previously I made something in august 2010… and I found a significantly sentence (written by me) ” I did it something, I dont know, now it’s worst!!! F********”

My project was (well…. IS!) a casual game for desktop: in that time Three-Match was the mainstream genre; Hidden Object games were at the start (too big compared to the other casual games).

At the time default resolution was 800×600 pixel, and the idea was to support old hardware (640×480 desktop with low level hardware): so I take the decision (stupid, very stupid!!! another lesson learnt 🙁 ) to define all the graphics at the resolution of 640×480 pixels.

Now, 4 years later it looks AWFUL… no, not really, just ‘out of time’ 😀

In these days I tried to change some aspects of the game: now it can runs in 1024×768… but the graphics must be redone. I made a ‘framework’ (sprites, particles, sceneManager, colorFont, TextSprites and so on) and they are quite ‘scalable’. The only problem is the SceneManager: if you feed it with 640×480 screen resolution it creates a sort of ‘virtual resolution’ (not in the same way of BlitzMax).. but the results are ‘zoomed’ graphics.

Even the idea to use BlitzMax Virtual Resolution system is not very elegant: I tried, but a graphics designed for a 640×480 screen on a 1024×768 is not so good. So I decided to run the game to 1024×768 while my SceneManager ‘stretch’ (at the moment) sprites/images in the background.

Of course I looked in the source code deeper… an OH MY GOD!

In 5 minutes I’ve found so many bugs and ‘stupid’ algorithms… I’ve cleaned up some library (part of my ‘framework’). I’ve added a nice and clean ‘tweening system’ (based on the work of DMAZ user (see here ) and now everything runs very smooth.

Of course I cant’ change everything: my game is at 99% (levels are completed since years now!) it’s just to test it in the real world!

If I can change (and I did it) the source good, otherwise my next efforts will be (again!) GRAPHICS!!!
I realized that the graphics, compared with today games, seems ‘sad’, not so ‘shiny’… need to check more today casual games!

So, new TIMELINE! (I already know I cant’ follow it… from February new jobs are coming 🙁 )

1. fix (if possible) all the bugs and old codes with the new ones;
2. change the graphics (background, not game itself);
3. make a proper intro;
4. test it on many machine as possible (XP, Seven… I cant’ test on Vista or W8!);
5. finish it;
6. publish it;
7. (or in the case point 6 will be a failure…) release it free;

Of course I have already new ideas for my ‘next’ game(s) ;D (and some are only for mobile!)