9th September 2015

Developments

Yesterday was spent tweaking various difficulty settings. There are 11 (0-10) available difficulties being coded into the level generator, and this video shows what happens at Level 3.
Level 0 is easiest, with fewer easier to manage baddies, whilst level 10 is full of spikes and nasty Duck-Turrets.
Today I'm going to be tweaking the generator some more, to allow for all kinds of other obstacles and things, and with each minor tweak comes a whole host of possibilities, so it's good to know that there's going to be a decent bit of variety in the end resulting game.
.. Or at least, I hope there is, anyway!!

I've also begun thinking of a layout for the menu system, along with ways that I can keep it under control enough that a GameCenter scoreboard will be vaguely usable. That might be the difficult bit, though!!
There's going to be a LOT of levels!!!

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Daily Doodle : Test Run

SantaPlat dons half his outfit, and takes a few of the Reinplats on a short trip, to ensure they're all still comfortable flying around when it gets closer to Festive Day.
He hasn't grown his beard, yet, though. Only a few months to go!! Eeek!

Mailbag

Today's mail is a lovenote to SpikeDislike, from Jimi

Spike Dislike was a great game. Spike Dislike 2 polished the SD formula and made it even more compelling. The thing I got most hooked on with SD2 was the leaderboards... I was obsessed. At one point I think I had the top score on all but one level (Barry the Bee.... or whatever he was called. That bloody bee!!!). But obviously not everyone can be fighting for the top leaderboard spot, so that battle probably kept me and a handful of others engaged in exciting battle for a few weeks, but all the other players would have to have found other reasons to get sucked in.

I think SD3 addresses this limitation with its level progression system. It gives a reason to keep going back even if you're not involved in a leaderboard competition. The different levels are aesthetically interesting, and the small variations stop the game from getting too samey. Some of the changes are really fun (and creative and unexpected) as well! Which is great.

I do miss the leaderboard frenzy feeling of SD2, but then again, that exists already: it's called Spike Dislike 2. I feel that SD2 and SD3 complement each other fantastically, both as evolutions and refinements of the original SpikeDislike. I'd say they satisfy different types of player, and I'd recommend to new players to try them both and see how they get on!

Jimi

SD3 still has it's leaderboards, for each of those Infinity/Endless levels, but you're right in suggesting that the focus has indeed shifted in this edition. In fact, that's something that I try to do quite a lot.
The way I see it, pretty much all of the games I've ever written are still available from my archive, so there's not much point in me simply repeating the same exact game. Each time I re-attempt something, I'll try to change a few things, and make sure there's a good reason for having both versions exist.
There are, of course, numerous exceptions to this rule. Once you hit 100 games it gets hard not to repeat yourself. .. By the time you're up to 342, repetition is practically unavoidable!
But in general, each game should have it's own reason to exist, and I think I've managed that fairly well.
.. Hopefully...

If you'd like to stuff my mailbag, you can do so right here, at https://bit.ly/AGAW_Mail . Send comments, questions, game ideas, thoughts and more, and they'll probably turn up here, eventually.

Gameboy!

YouTuber Max Sch?tz has posted a video of himself playing the recent Gameboy port of SpikeDislike, running on on a REAL GAMEBOY!

Awesome!!

Views 35, Upvotes 4

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