Working with the Coder!

Working with the coder has been really interesting. He has made us think about our games, not just in terms of animation for a film, but in a more practical way to make them come to life in a game.

I have had to make sure that everything is the right size and the loops are seamless so that the animations look smooth in the coding.

Also, I have had to make sure everything is as cropped as possible, to make the game file as small as possible, and easily accessible for people to download over 3G. Under 10 MB is the limit, but I think it might take some time to make sure my game is that small a file, and that efficient.

I have also been learning bits of very simple code, and very simple concepts, such as the tick engine that he wrote for us. This sends a tick out to the screen, which decides what is called to the screen at that particular moment, (each of these moments being much much less than a second, and faster than human eyes would notice.. hopefully).

I have also learnt how to edit some of the points, such as where objects appear on the screen, and how much they increase by when they enlarge.

Apart from this, I have learnt how to import updated animation files, (as PNGs) to xcode, and to make sure that the coding is connected to the file that you have imported. This way I don't have to just rely on Ian (the coder), to do even the simplest tasks for me.

This is a mock-up of some of the gameplay that we have worked out so far!