BrainWave - No Load Times, and Native iOS style elements & functionality
marc_greiff
Member, PRO Posts: 250
Hi and welcome to my thread discussing my new upcoming project, BrainWave.
What is BrainWave?
BrainWave is a memory/logic/problem solving "brain-training" game. Imagine something similar to Lumosity (lumosity.com) and Brain Age (available on the Nintendo DS, brainage.com). The game at its core is broken down into the three categories listed above, each with two minigames that will track your overal progress every time you play. However, at this point, the name "BrainWave" is tentative, so please feel free to make a suggestion in the comments below. Preferably, I would like to keep "Brain" in the title as it is the dominate search term for this type of game.
Okay, so on to the "guts" of the project! One of my main goals here is to make something that doesn't feel like a gamesalad game. What I mean by this is, I want to eliminate the elements that generally plague all of us here in the community, most notably, the load times between scenes. Personally, the apps that I enjoy most are the ones that are snappy and leave me feeling with a sense of momentum. So to accomplish this, I will have to put everything in a single scene, resulting in a single load time at the start of the game. Regarding snappyness and UX (user experience), I want it to feel indistinguishable from a native iOS style app. For example, in my game the user selects their game type from the homescreen by swiping left or right, similar to how your homescreen works on your iphone when swiping between your rows of icons. Lets examine this idea and break it down to a few key elements that we can replicate in gamesalad. So, if you take a look at your homescreen and swipe through it, you will notice that it is essentially doing three things.
1. As soon as you touch the screen the icon set drags with your finger.
2. When released the icons leave your finger with the velocity at which you "flicked" them.
3. That velocity, however, is stopped when the next screen is reached and "snapped" in place
So, drag, flick, snap!
After some fiddling around I was able to get this idea to work, and quite fluidly too! Special thanks to a tshirtbooth video and tutorial template which I modified. I will post a video showing the result so you can get an idea of what I'm talking about.
Thats all I have to post for now folks, but check back soon and please make a name suggestion below!
Thanks,
m
What is BrainWave?
BrainWave is a memory/logic/problem solving "brain-training" game. Imagine something similar to Lumosity (lumosity.com) and Brain Age (available on the Nintendo DS, brainage.com). The game at its core is broken down into the three categories listed above, each with two minigames that will track your overal progress every time you play. However, at this point, the name "BrainWave" is tentative, so please feel free to make a suggestion in the comments below. Preferably, I would like to keep "Brain" in the title as it is the dominate search term for this type of game.
Okay, so on to the "guts" of the project! One of my main goals here is to make something that doesn't feel like a gamesalad game. What I mean by this is, I want to eliminate the elements that generally plague all of us here in the community, most notably, the load times between scenes. Personally, the apps that I enjoy most are the ones that are snappy and leave me feeling with a sense of momentum. So to accomplish this, I will have to put everything in a single scene, resulting in a single load time at the start of the game. Regarding snappyness and UX (user experience), I want it to feel indistinguishable from a native iOS style app. For example, in my game the user selects their game type from the homescreen by swiping left or right, similar to how your homescreen works on your iphone when swiping between your rows of icons. Lets examine this idea and break it down to a few key elements that we can replicate in gamesalad. So, if you take a look at your homescreen and swipe through it, you will notice that it is essentially doing three things.
1. As soon as you touch the screen the icon set drags with your finger.
2. When released the icons leave your finger with the velocity at which you "flicked" them.
3. That velocity, however, is stopped when the next screen is reached and "snapped" in place
So, drag, flick, snap!
After some fiddling around I was able to get this idea to work, and quite fluidly too! Special thanks to a tshirtbooth video and tutorial template which I modified. I will post a video showing the result so you can get an idea of what I'm talking about.
Thats all I have to post for now folks, but check back soon and please make a name suggestion below!
Thanks,
m
Comments
Love the look and feel of the UI elements.
It’s not a bug – it’s an undocumented feature
So, after much deliberation I've decided to take the design style in a different but similar direction. I'm now dropping the IOS menu bars and buttons. Instead, I'm taking an uber minimalistic approach which I think will work better overall. This way, all visual distractions are eliminated and the user can focus on the task at hand--training their brain! However, thats not to say I dont want the game to look stylish, thats still a major goal of the overall design.
All on screen elements are now simply white, either filled in or outlined. As for the backgrounds, the user will have the option of choosing the color from the options menu. This way, you wont get sick of staring at the same colour every session.
Have a look, let me know what you think...likes, dislikes, suggestions!