Server-Side Story
 

I'm reluctant to elaborate on this in case nothing comes of it but it's my attempt at zoomorphising a google bot.

To not really elaborate at all:

Retro game box art:

are you attempting another game?

Yep, me and my computing teacher were talking about how production times/staff size for games have increased since he was a kid and how charming some of the retro games seem now and it ended up with him challenging me to male a retro game as quickly as possible...

So I decided to go with retro graphics/sound so I can do it quickly, hoping I can finish by easter. I know pretty much what I'm going to do...


On a slightly related note I managed to solve most of my previous problems, I know know how to get it to work I'm just not sure if that's what I should do. Do you know of anywhere where I can find examples of Iphone apps? The only ones I can find aren't object oriented.

not object orientated? I don't know how that happens in objC...
I don't know of any examples because I already knew how OOP worked when I started and had seen it before in java and C#.
Now that i have a mac of my own i can probably provide some assistance more better than before

Which icon do you think is better?
I'm leaning towards the last one but it seems a bit too nondescript.
I guess I have to balance between what looks good and what will catch peoples' eyes

May I suggest the server at an angle like #1, a much lighter background like #2 but w/o 1s and 0s and the spider front on like #2.

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll give that a shot tomorrow.
I did have two more attempts before I came back to this thread though. Really can't decide between the two...

They look the same to me... oh, different shadows? #2 then. Or rather my idea :P

I gave it a shot, what do you think?

that's a good one. I do wonder though... why don't you just post the icon instead a whole screen shot...?

I find on its own it is much harder to see how good it is. The second one I posted seemed all right on its own but next to all the other icons looks quite bad....

I think that's pretty good... you could try it with the spider flat like in the second one over the server, and also give that semi-circular lighten effect that apple does a try so you can really compare it to the other icons.

I had a bash at a menu, the small spiders either won't be there or will wonder the screen...

To be honest, I really like this icon so I'm going to lay off it for a while so I can come back later and look at it more objectively.

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...

mmmmmmm
i suppose given that it's a real simple game you can get away with that.

Is there any reason (other than speed) why I wouldn't be able to?

probably not. it just seems weird doing it that way

It's because I've never really used CALayers.

Edit: I promise it will get more exciting once you reach the Memory management unit (which is obviously an elephant)

i was wondering where the elephant is...

Don't suppose you have any idea what the inside of a MMU looks like? :P

At the minute the only thing I can think of is a mail sorting centre run by elephants...

I've added accelerometer calibration, made the spider smaller, plus a few other tweaks...

edit: added collisions (you stop when you hit a byte) and the progress bar now works. I still need to animated the destruction of bytes when you hit them (might just scramble them, change their value), make you invulnerable for a while (with flashing) after hitting one and I need to put in the progress counter, speed counter and collision counter (plus some kind of progress reset if you have too many collisions). After all that I can get on with the MMU boss and start to worry about sound.

Another edit: Got the HUD working. Hope to deal with the rest of the collisions stuff today but I don't see where I'll get time to.

More edit: Scratch that, I did it.

wait... so crashing into the bytes that are coming at you is bad because it'll make the elephant more powerful and if you do it too much you'll have to start the trail all over again?

what happens when you reach the end?

If you do it too much you have to start again but I think that limit is going to be quite high, something that very few people will do. The original plan was to make the anti virus program more powerful in the CPU but now I'm not sure...

Once you get to about 60% of the way along the bus you reach the MMU, where you face the elephant and the resulting battle catapults you along the rest of the bus and to the CPU.
Once in the CPU you have to beat up programs for their time slices so you can get executed, whilst avoiding the anti virus program.
I still haven't decided what the anti virus program will look like though.

how do you plan on beating up programs?

With an identity disc of course!

Tron references aside I'm not really sure yet, I thought it might just be a matter of catching them. I thought about being able to spin webs to try and slow them down.
But it would be nice if it sort of made sense in the sense of a computer in a lateral kind of way.....
I'm not even sure what the programs will look like yet...