I'm not even sorry.

Cool idea. I think some of the logos are a bit too busy, especially given how small they will be on the iphone. Maybe if you went for something simpler, but just as telling. Maybe use binary to convey the general idea, but give it something to make it unique; like a binary spider/bug or a binary web.... but obviously a bit cooler.

hehe, this latest image is fun.

the text also looks like it'll be too small to read. On an iphone 4 it will be easy, not so convinced for the lesser versions

I was worried about that as well, so I tried it at the lower resolution first and then the higher one. It didn't really make any difference since it's a straight, not anti-aliased font. It is probably too small anyway though. I can read it fine but then I have fairly good eye sight.


@Mayaniac

Thanks, I think you're right about the logos, I never thought about a web. There has to be some kind of joke I can get there about the spider (bot) coming from the (world wide) web....

I definitely find making small things like this hard. It's hard to make it interesting without making it too busy.


I started with level 0, but do you think the next level should be level 1 or level 2? I just thought if I changed it to level 2 it might highlight the joke, rather than looking like something accidental.

Updates (that I can't really post in picture form) include wandering menu spiders and a moving bus.

the letters changing their boldness a lot would make it harder to read, at this zoom level it's readable but not fast. (at least that's what i think anyway)

it wouldn't make sense to start from level 0 and go straight to 2... if you went 0, 1, 2, 4, then it would make more sense... after all, 1 is also a power of 2...

The joke was supposed to be that array indexes start at zero...
Although that has given me an idea, I might do the level numbers in binary of hexadecimal...

What do you mean change their boldness? At the moment they are part of the (bitmap) background image.

yeah but thats a weird joke. it's proper to start at level 0 you see... so missing out 1 would just be totally weird ;)

boldness, eg, the 'o' in other is different to the 'o' in or

I think what makes it more difficult to read, in part, is the all-caps. It's easier to read smaller font when it has both lower and upper case, since the eye is trained to read the shapes of words along with the letters themselves.
And I think Chirone is saying 0,1,2,3 etc would be fine.

I see what you mean, I've increased the size and have pretty much gotten rid of that problem now.

You should probably expect a lot of weird jokes; the concept itself is a weird joke.
You're right, not calling level 2 level 1 would be lunacy. :P

@stwert
The font I'm using doesn't have lowercase and I couldn't find a decent (freeware) one that did.

Just a logistical question, which might be worth waiting for actual gameplay to ask, but whatever...
You've got "collisions with other data" will cause you to be "resent from RAM" and... "collisions will also slow you down"
Which is it? :P

Ah, thanks for pointing that out, it's if you collide with too much data you'll have to be resent from RAM.
I better change that....

Also, the excitement of animated menus: YouTube - Server-side story menus

I assume you're doing that with CALayers and CAAnimations?

Nope; just translating UIimages.

Also, progress:
YouTube - Moving bytes

Since making that I've added a thing to randomly display different bytes. (also I can't use the accelerometer with the simulator so the spider doesn't move in the video).

You gradually speed up (as long as you don't hit anything, which is why you start to overtake the bytes moving in the same direction as you. I think I need something to give a sense of that speed. I though about something at the side but I don't know what to stick there, I don't just want it to be something random...

What about some circuitry? PCB?

Good idea but it might be a bit tricky to tile without looking repetitive or being really big. Also, wouldn't make much sense having a PCB behind the full length of a memory bus.
Still, it's the best I've got at the moment.

Edit: Perhaps I should just try dashes between the bits, rather than solid lines...