More Thinking, Less Coding

Oct 21, 2013


We are nearing the halfway mark of our final project but to be honest we haven't finalized on the game idea. We went on an excursion to the arcade and spent roughly 8 bucks each, trying out the games the arcade had to offer.

Here's a picture of Chun Mun and Viet Tien having fun playing Bishi Bashi:

Initially we wanted to emulate the game Gyro and make a multiplayer version of it. However, after further consideration, I found it inappropriate and people would get bored easily and called for a discussion with the team.

Our target application has to be:

  • Multiplayer (Support up to 10 concurrent players)
  • Casual
  • Newcomers who just joined the game should not be too disadvantaged
  • Make use of a mobile devices' capabilities

The games that came to my mind that fell into this category were multiplayer First-Person shooters such as Counter Strike and Team Fortress 2. A team-based shooting game should work for us!

The next decision was to decide on the theme of the game. As I am the sole designer and front end styler, we have to pick a theme that was nice, easy and fast to design. What is a front end styler? I just coined the term. It means a developer who focuses on making the interface look pretty, which in this case mostly involves writing CSS. Sadly I'm not the only front end engineer here because Soedar, Viet Tien and Chun Mun all write better JavaScript than me. Sounds like the Project Management triangle where you pick two from "Fast", "Good" and "Cheap"? Not so much here because in design that is possible. Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal. But the best artists steal, modify, combine things, and make it their own! That's how the iPhone was made anyways.

Here's a sneak peek at what we have for the project so far:

Splashscreen

Looks pretty okay? I think so too. Let's see what we can come up with in the next 3 weeks. (: