grow notes

These are my development notes. They're pretty random, mostly ideas I want to look into implimenting, and rants about how I want to work on this concept.

Play: Beta | Alpha ( growing | eating | scrolling )

beta

i posted a beta version of my game to my deviant art page. and all ready someone recognized it as a flOw clone. :P

i'm happy with everything i have going on in the beta. i fixed a lot of the bugs. also got some good input.

known bugs include:

some of the floaters can't be eaten.
legs on load.
needs a pause button so players can go away from the game and come back.

well. that's basically the game. i'm going to update how i handle the floaters. make it so you never really run out. i'll probably do this by having a bunch of floater groups that will re spawn floaters off screen when you eat all of them.

and from there it'll be cleaning up how everything works. and making the presentation nicer. at some point i'll have to talk to cara about helping with some audio for the game.

my idea for the audio is a few nice atmospheric tracks. could have them playing depending on if you were within the different floater groups. and have the volume based on the amount of floaters alive. and have some different eating sounds based on how complex the floater is. and the volume based on size.

Dec. 10th, 2007 at 7:20 PM

i have it so you swim around and eats the food. i need add scrolling and have the food regenerate so you don't run out.

but i'm excited that it works. you eat the food and you grow. :D

Dec. 10th, 2007 at 3:23 PM

i have the food processing working to a point where i'm happy with it. i have an example up of the food processing. the head is randomly getting food (to simulate eating) and then it passes it to the body. the body than grows. :D

i'll probably modify how this all works. add more ways for it to grow. i'll probably have the circles it adds smaller. and i'll want to add lines. and i'll probably work on how it places these.

but now it's time to work on implementing the food and eating.

Dec. 10th, 2007 at 12:26 PM

been discussing with sable how to handle segment growth. each segment will be responsible for it's own growth. it'll use the mass it obtains from food to grow. and will pass along what it doesn't use. i think i'll have a minimum threshold for the generation of new segments.

i might have it pass food in both directions. or have it favor personal growth over passing. that way things closer to the head will grow faster.

i think i'll have the likely hood of passing the food be based on how much bigger the parent segment is. oh! i like that. and if there isn't a child it'll hold onto that food until it can build a child.

i think i'll store food mass in solid circles inside the segment hearts. these will be stored and consumed to grow things outside the heart, which will add mass to the segment. each of the circles will hold information, how much energy there is, what type of energy it is.

all the complexity will essentially be reused for everything. so once i get one segment working all of them should work. also the actual food you eat in the game will use this same information. all the food will be generated dynamically and be given different properties.

at this point i'm thinking the two main types of growth will be circles and lines. i'm thinking of also adding color at some point.

currently the worm has two types of segments. the head, and the standard segment. the head is a special type. in that it eats food and will grow differently.

i have an idea for how i want to update the movement. have the segments chasing a point near the butt of their parents. instead of the center. and have it so that they randomly move around to different points. basically this point will be within a set degrees from the back. this should make the worm wiggle.

Dec. 10th, 2007 at 2:42 AM

so after playing flOw at a friend's house this weekend i'm compelled to write my own version in flash. and of course my brain isn't going to shut up about it till i get the movement down. so at two in the morning after trying to sleep here's a worm chasing your the mouse.

now i just need to implement eating and growing and evolving and all that jazz. i have LOTS of ideas for how to handle that. i'm going to simplify the base shape for body segments to the circle. and add dots and lines and whatnot to it as it obtains mass. when you eat something you get it's mass and pass it down through your body. each section will store mass. different foods will cause you to gain different types of mass. so you'll grow weird shapes wherever said mass gets applied. making your worm grow into it's own random thing.

i'm also going to add a head object that will have a mouth and will randomly grow and get more complex too. each of your segments will keep a record of how it's grown so i'll be able to save you worm into a database. i'll also have that affect how those sections are absorbed when eaten. (ie: there will probably be other worms for you to eat, if you eat a section of a worm it'll cut it in half at that point.)

i'm thinking of having the heart peaces (the root circle of all segments, including generic food) be able to use it's mass to grow it's size. and make it so you can only eat hearts that are smaller than your mouth.