Rocket Bits – Mini-Update – New Lighting

Wednesday, December 7th, 2011

Mike Wildermuth ( creator of Cannonball Bounce ) gave me the great idea to show mini-updates here on the blog with pictures and videos! So here’s the first of hopefully many future “mini-updates” to give you guys a peek at how they’re coming along.

Check out this video showing off the new lighting system inspired by Wallaby and Mike:

Next up for this first update will be the basic system for getting out of the ship and walking around as a little space man! That should be fun to code!

On a side note: anyone know of a good WordPress plugins for collecting all of the ideas for the game? It’s only been two days and it’s already getting tough to keep track of all the great ideas coming from iTunes comments, blog comments, e-mail and Twitter! Ideally there would be a magical plugin that I can add to this site filled with happiness and candy that allows for ideas to be added and discussed as well as allow for people to vote on them. Anyone know if something like that exists that would be easy to add? I can find my way around PHP, but I’m definitely no web developer so the simpler the better!


There are 13 comments in this article:

  1. Wednesday, December 7th, 2011Hoberfinkle says:

    Oh my goodness D: this morning I tried to figure the PHP stuff out…I failed…miserably.

  2. Wednesday, December 7th, 2011RegularKid says:

    Well thanks for trying!

  3. Wednesday, December 7th, 2011MWildermuth says:

    The lighting looks awesome! Will beacons show up on the big map? Kinda like a marker for a point of interest too.

  4. Wednesday, December 7th, 2011Kaleb says:

    That light looks soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo awesome!!! Great job!!! The beacons will be cool because they will show where you have been. I cant wait for the little space man!!

    One question: Why is the cave matter/material orange? is it supposed to be lava? I’m not saying that it looks bad or anything, but i am just wondering what substance it is supposed to be.

  5. Wednesday, December 7th, 2011RegularKid says:

    Thanks guys!

    @Kaleb I made everything red-ish orange to try to look like Mars or something :)

  6. Wednesday, December 7th, 2011MWildermuth says:

    Maybe the faster you are fly the farther the camera zooms out, so I can avoid the terrain a bit easier when I am cruising around the planet.

  7. Thursday, December 8th, 2011Ken Kercheval says:

    Could the global lighting be darker so it’s really hard to see the terrain? Enforcing the idea of placing beacons at tricky to navigate areas.
    Maybe the power source for these beacons is something that the player has to collect in spaceman form, then take back to the ship.
    What if the ship took damage from collisions with the terrain, eventually resulting in game over.

  8. Saturday, December 10th, 2011RegularKid says:

    Hi Ken!

    Good idea, I’ll try to make the non-lit areas a little darker. It’s also a little different looking on the iPhone screen vs. a computer monitor for some reason and is already a little darker on the device. And I definitely like the idea of collecting things while you’re in “little spaceman form” :)

    The health is something we’ll all have to figure out: what is the goal of the game? How does the player die?

    Thanks!

  9. Saturday, December 10th, 2011RegularKid says:

    @Mike: hehe, I’ll see if that’s easy to add… for some engine reasons I have the viewing screen size pretty locked in unfortunately. But I’ll see if it’d be easy to zoom out since that would be pretty cool! Thanks!

  10. Monday, December 12th, 2011Ken Kercheval says:

    Hi, I’ve been thinking of an idea for the spaceman navigation. The spaceman could be tethered to the ship via a cable, which also acts as a lifeline (oxygen supply) at any point the spaceman can detach and walk around for a limited time, but must always return to the cable before the oxygen supply runs out. This set up could be used for basic navigation puzzles, such as clearing out a path for the ship to pass through, the player would use the cable and float to a previously unreachable ledge, and detach from the cable to plant a charge.
    Could the rocket ship have a levelling up system? Shields, gun turrets etc. Levelling up could be an option to increase the cable length, giving access to previously unreachable areas.

    Ken

  11. Tuesday, December 13th, 2011RegularKid says:

    Good stuff, Ken! You hit the nail on the head: in the current implementation there is an oxygen meter when you’re out of the ship. You need to get back to the ship before you run out… it’s a very basic first pass that I’ll include in the first update and then we’ll see what everyone thinks and change accordingly.

    And upgrades / leveling for the ship are definitely high on the list of requested features so I’m sure they’ll get in one way or another. Thanks!

  12. Friday, December 16th, 2011Ken Kercheval says:

    For large maps warp gates or black holes could be useful for quick navigation, these could either be part of the world or an upgrade to the ship that the player can deploy.

  13. Friday, December 16th, 2011RegularKid says:

    I added that one to the Google moderator list, Ken! Thanks! http://www.google.com/moderator/#16/e=19bd07

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