Hello All,

There’s a technique or method, called ‘Kill your Darlings’ .. or at least something close to that. And essentially what it is refering to, is that a creator should be prepared to rethink, or tweak… or even KILL something in his creation that he is fond of… (that is, if it is not working… of course 😛 No reason to remove something that just plain rocks! unless you can replace it with something equally rocks-worthy! 😉 )

Basically I have played around with the Bump’n’Drop mechanics for the past few days, and it just doesnt strike me as being as much fun as I originally thought it coulda/woulda been 🙂

I cant quite put my finger on it, but I think it has to do with the way that I am trying to enforce steering on the ball, with something that is not visible… as in.. clicking the keyboard keys to somehow push and shove the ball, but the shoving only goes straight left or straight right… and it just doesnt seem ‘fun’ or sensible to me…

So I did some thinking and ended up with a different control mechanism that I THINK might turn out to be more fun. But of course, being me… I will have to implement it and try it out before I can really sense wether or not this is a fun way of controlling a ball or not 🙂

My thought is that I want for the game to be something similar to this description:

1. game takes place on a single screen, a level constructed with gravity in mind, and multiple bouncers as well as bonus objects
2. a bouncer will make the ball bounce and rebound, so it can both help and hinder the ball in doing its job
3. a bonus object is needed to complete the level. There will be more bonus objects on the level than needed to complete a level. allowing the player to try for different paths to finish a map.
4. The ball starts at the top of the screen at a location selected by the player.
5. the player cannot control or touch the ball except for the following:

• At the start of a level the player uses his mouse to position the ball at the top of the screen, and then lets it drop/fall
• After the ball has dropped the player uses the mouse/pointer to create either a push (think of an explosion/shockwave type of push) by tapping the mouse somewhere near the ball.
• or a Pull, kind of like a whirlpool, vacuum sucking the ball towards the mouse, by holding down the button.

The game concept has been done in many different various before… ranging from breakout/arkanoid back in the early days of computer gaming… to Peggle and Sushi Cat in modern day gaming. So dont worry, I know im not exactly inventing the wheel here 🙂 However, I still feel that I can bring something new to the genre, and even if I dont do that… then at least I’ll have fun making a game 😉

And when I say fun… I’m actually refering to seeing my friends, family and testers try out the things I am working on, and providing me with feedback and their thoughts! Cause the actual programming part is about as much fun to me as trying to climb a glass wall with silk-gloves 😛 … meaning its probably more fun to watch the silly faces I make when I get stuck with the code 😉

Feel free to comment, leave your thoughts!

Thanks for reading! 🙂