Month: April 2008

time has been dense. regarding the game, the plan i set out for myself fell between the cracks. the good news is, i still have two weeks. the bad news is, i don’t see how the coming weeks can be much different than the previous several.

my game now has a name — burbujitas, which means “little bubbles” and targets a latino audience, following a bubble blowing trend/phenomenon in mexico. the concept has remained fairly constant. i wanted to learn flash, develop my creative process, and produce a game that would be used by people of any age-group, but more likely children, who are into ice cream, bright colors and sounds, competition, and fun. the users are to test their lung capacity against one another, to balance their drive with a need to stay conscious, both in real life and in the game, and to essentially lightly strategize to get the prize. i’ve learned that while i’m drawn to working on the aesthetics of the mda structure, the mechanics are more challenging and captivating as well. the difficulty w the mechanics has kept me from really being able to address the dynamics, unfortunately.

progress includes:

-an improved interface, with scene changing functionality

-a scoring system that reveals the winner

-attempts with photo interrupters and ir emitter/detector pairs for the controlling units

challenges include:

-utilizing a timer function “to put a player to sleep”

-building controllers that function

-improving user feedback on the main screen and creating a more exciting conclusion

something weird i just realized when testing is that with each rematch, the sleepycount no longer decrements by 1, but instead by the number of rematches (i.e. down by two the first rematch, down by three the second rematch, etc.) — maybe a cool feature, but not sure why it happens.
burbujitas v. b5