21 May Momonga Monday: 4 Work-In-Progress Updates

It’s Monday, so it’s time for another Momonga update. This week I will give you a bit of a progress report, as we have been working on some cool things recently. We are closing in on the deadline, and things are slowly progressing to where we want it to be. Not as fast as we had hoped… but I guess that’s how it goes – it’s done when it’s done.

(More on release dates soon – We are still trying to squeeze it in the “Spring” deadline we set for ourselves, but it will be tough to make that one. We might have to postpone.)

1. Interface

Yorick and Tedo are working hard on the implementation of the new interface. You have seen the interface designs for the iPhone and iPad versions of the game, and now we are making them functional. (And by the way – if you are interested in the interaction design process, here is an 8-Step Guide To Interface Design for iPhone Games.)

Here is the HUD in Unity, ready for action:

And here are the Chapter and Level Selection screens in Unity:

They sort of work at this stage, but as you can see they are not fully implemented yet. We have switched to a plugin called “NGUI” for Unity, and that works out pretty well – but it’s a new plugin for us, so there is some learning involved.

Slow and steady wins the race here. I think we will have the interface ready this week or the next.

2. Boss level: Giant Mole Rat

We have been brainstorming on a new boss level. In the Forest chapter, you travel through the old forests of Xio, which holds the ruins of a legendary city. In the boss level, you are happily traveling the forest, and then this happens:

…and what happens next is that you meet a Giant Mole Rat. We might show a bit more of the level in another Momonga Monday. Maybe we’ll save it for launch. Don’t know yet. 😉

3. Chapter Selection environment

Jimmy is currently hard at work on the new chapter selection backdrop. We have three chapters, and each has its own environment style. All of this comes together in a huge painting, Bob Ross style:

This is still work in progress, so stay tuned for the final result 🙂

4. Dialogue & Cutscenes

We have created a new Dialogue & Cutscene system and I am in the process of implementing the text. It feels like being a director on a movie set, which is awesome 🙂

It is a matter of setting up the scene, positioning the characters, and adding dialogue in a plug-in called Playmaker. And here is a work-in-progress screenshot of what that looks like in-game:

We still have a lot of work to do on the dialogue and backgrounds – there is no backdrop yet. All of that will be fixed soon.

See you next week! And it is Pentecost then, so it’s probably going to be Tuesday 😉

Cheers!
Derk