Development phase 2

In March 2015 picked up Starminer again and started making better graphics, more sounds, more animations, more particle effects, level backgrounds and all kinds of polishing. This was about this time that I made my previous post on this blog. This is how Starminer looked then:

Going mobile

Up to this point, I was creating Starminer as a computer (Linux/Mac/Windows) game, but since I was using Haxe+OpenFL, which allow me to compile my game for several other platforms, I decided to give it a try in a mobile device, although I was utterly convinced that the twitchy nature of the game wouldn’t go well with the rigidity of the touch interface. Turns out I was wrong, and I enjoyed it thoroughly to play Starminer on a touch screen.

Because of this, I re-did all the graphics of the game. Even the ones that look like they didn’t change. I decided to support natively all the resolutions available on iOS to date, so I created Spritesheets with a version of every graphics for each resolution. I’ve also spent some time doing experiences with different things that didn’t really work out. Some of them looked really good, but didn’t really work out when put in the game. Such an example, are the versions of the orbs in this image, that I spend a couple of weeks experimenting with but the game was definitely better with the simpler ones.

Second hiatus

By August I started loosing a bit of steam, and then only made a couple of commits in October. Then, I was accepted to speak at an international conference, so I once again shifted my focus to writing the talk and preparing myself to deliver it. In November, I still made a couple of commit, but by the end of December, I received the good news that I was going to become a father, so for the next year, I didn’t really prioritise looking at the game.

All in all, 2015 was a pretty good year when it comes to Starminer, save a few interruptions, I was doing things for it from April to August, and by then the game was almost in its final state.