Posts Tagged ‘progress’

HalmaStar Screenshots #0002

Saturday, August 29th, 2009

Lately, my webserver provider sent me a message that the order for a year is about to end and that I have to pay for the next year. The Chinese Checkers website on that webserver has been holding just the logo for the whole year. The company of another webserver where I keep this blog, sent me a coupon of 75 € for advertising at Google Adwords. I have an ad, but still no project to advertise. I won’t promote my personal blog, will I!? So I have lots of encouragement and motivators, just the time is what I am lack of…

Anyway my creative work doesn’t stand still. I learned the basics of Gimp. Whenever I find some free hours among the sessions my work and spare time, I sit down and glue the graphical design together.

Page design

I changed the typeface of the logo. It’s much more lively and playful now. The Asian motives of the letters fit with the Manga-styled face of the star better that the old bitten typeface.

The website design will be of a space theme. At the moment there are just stars pasted all around. But probably later I will also add satellites, rockets, and even some absurd objects, let’s say, a wooden chair flying in the space. I am still thinking how to layout the textual elements like chats, titles, descriptions, collected points, etc. so that they fit in the main design. It’s also not clear how to layout the blog and forum as I don’t have experience in creating webdesign, but still I want something unique.

Berlin planet

All the planets will be different. At the moment I am only drawing the planets of Berlin and Vilnius. WTF? Since when Vilnius has been a planet!? As I’ve written in the first part, planets will uncover the identity of different capitals of Europe. That’s why I was asking for public opinion what things symbolize Vilnius for Lithuanians.

For liveliness each player will be represented by an avatar of the same color which marbles he’s using in the Chinese Checkers. I wanted to have single-colored unisex-styled dress. I was thinking about some overalls or cloaks.. Fortunatelly, Viktorija was doing her diploma about cloths which were sexless enough, futuristic, and original. The best part here is that she agreed that those textile designs will be used in my game and sent me the photos and sketches.

Persona

I am moving forward in turtle steps. Maybe I’ll finish in, let’s say, 10 years. It would be better to do that sooner, because I decided to find a girlfriend when I finish this project… As I was jealous of the relations of two couples visiting me recently. :D

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HalmaStar Screenshots #0001

Friday, February 27th, 2009

Liudas induced. I thought a little bit. Just a little. And decided that I need. I need to publish the present progress of the game. When I am rich and famous, I will send a link to my grandchildren by telepathone as a joke so that they knew how everything had started. They’ll say: “Wooow, Grandpa! That’s a greatozer! Haven’t you really got any 4D games those times!?”

So I am producing an online Halma à la Chinese Checkers. Everything looks like this at the moment:

HalmaStar Screenshots #0001 - Madrid

That pink wallpaper is not a design element, but a layout grid and all elements of the page should be aligned to it. The star of the original version of the game is like in this image (the row of the corner of the star consists of four balls), but the star of my game can theoretically be of any size.

HalmaStar Screenshots #0001 - Vatican

The amount of boards will be limited. So:

  • The probability of several people playing at a board will be larger than of two players.
  • The system won’t use too many resources.
  • The player will feel like in an own inner circle.

I am just programming at the moment, but later I will need to integrate some design. I have an idea. Listen! Every board will be in a planet which is called the same as a capital of Europe, and you will see unique elements which identify the capital in the background, i.e.: Brandenburg Gate, Gediminas’ Castle, Eiffel Tower, Thames Gateway Bridge, and others. For example, the boards shown above will be presented as the planets of Madrid and Vatican respectively. The players will have avatars wearing cloths of the same color as their playing pieces. The avatars will stand in different sides of the planet. So the funny logical game will get the feature of identifying yourself as an avatar and also it will spread information about the identity of the city (and also country). I see a perfect medium for in-game advertising in my visions (i.e., posters in the city of the planet, special tees for avatars, or logos integrated into the background of the site).

Look, what prototype I scribbled:

HalmaStar Screenshots #0001 - Graphical design prototype

I haven’t decided yet what is better – photorealism or symbolism. Do you have any ideas? Or would you like to create a professional page layout for the game site? Whereas I myself will devote all my power to the stability of functionality (with and without Javascript), the standards of semantics, the technical implementation of the graphical design, and additional features.

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