BLUE (Updated EXE, 11-12-2009)

EDIT (11-12-2009) -

New Version is online!

http://www.jasonkoohi.com/blue__11-12-09.zip

SIZE : 19.4 MB

BLUE

<img src="http://img42.imageshack.us/img42/5989/screen2re.jpg">

Controls so far:

draw a circle with the mouse - Make a storm

press K - Kite flies by

Press B - Birds fly by

press A - airplane flies by

Numbers 1-9 do different atmosphere colors (1-4 go from daytime to nighttime sequentially)

These are just pieces of the game. Now I need to assemble them into something that is fun. For instance, i need to have a new gesture to make the plane fly by, or something. The environment is looking how i want it to, but it needs gameplay to work. That's next on my to-do list.

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This is a little something I've been playing with. It's more of a sandbox toy than a game, but perhaps you'll find it interesting.

I was really stressed yesterday, so I made this and the game really relaxed me.

You can make clouds by dragging your mouse. You get small puffy clouds with the left button and more wispy ones with the right button. You can draw pictures in the sky, which is fun for a while, and you can also cause a rain storm (and makes the sky gray and cloudier), and make the sun come out. By drawing a circle you can cause the rain storm. I want to keep adding interactions like that though, and perhaps even add objectives (or things to collect). Drawing things and having them show up is half of the fun of this game. Right now you can just mess around with it, but that's pretty much it. It's more a proof of concept than anything else.

I want to add a distant airplane flying by, maybe some birds, and a night time scene with stars and shooting stars.

I made all the graphics in Photoshop. The music is not mine, I got it off of Soundsnap, but I plan on composing something myself.

Also, after you get bored, you can hit 1,2, and 3, to change the sky's color. They were just test buttons that changed colors, just to make sure they were working properly.

Wow, that is beautiful. Very, very nice!

Cool stuff, dude

That's really nice

I can't get the rainstorm to work, though. How is the gesture done?

Anytime you click the mouse to make a cloud, there is a medium sized white rotating circle that pops up. It's kind of like a guide... if you draw a circle where that little guide was at, then it should initiate the rain cloud.

Thanks for the kind words everyone.

This is very beautiful!

It got a little too heavy on my computer after a while, but it was a very enjoyable experience. Nice work!

Good. New interactions may be interesting.

Thanks everyone. Here's a little peek at the things I've been working on since i posted last. The perspective is a little different. It was from the side, but I have it set up now as if you're lyingon the ground, looking up. The picture doesn't adequately show the movements and animations of the trees from the storm, or the rain effects, but you can kind of see the leaves coming off the trees.

I also added rain effects that are different from the old rain effects. Droplets land on the camera now, trees (that blow in the wind when its raining), leaves blow off away from the trees when high wind is occurring, and a passenger jet flies by. I also have a lot of sound effects now, for ambiance, the rain, wind blowing, etc. It's much more immersive.

I personally like the new view. It's like you're lying down in the grass, looking up at the sky. Now that I have the concept solidified I'm going to keep adding new things for people to discover. Hey, I might have a full fledged game by the end of it!

I'm going to need to do a little optimizing though, the particle effects can get heavy, so I'm going to need to set up some limits, and drops the particle counts, particularly on the clouds that the player can make.

Beautiful. My only suggestion is to slide up and down the drawing sound's volume instead of turning it on and off.

Mind if I ask how do you recognize the gesture?

Thanks. Yeah, I was having trouble getting the volume to work how I wanted it to. I wanted it to fade away quickly, and not have a harsh on/off effect, but I just couldn't get it working right. Still messing with it.

I can't take full credit for the mouse gestures because cow_trix suggested a system in the help thread. I tried it and it worked and I added in a few extra checks to make sure a circle was drawn exactly.

It's really simple.

<img src="http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/8218/diagram.gif">

Basically, a group of invisible sprites follow the mouse cursor, that look like that diagram. When the mouse button is held down, the group sets into position and will no longer move where the cursor goes. When the mouse button is released the group pops back into position following the cursor.

The little sprites in a circle path can be turned on if the mouse cursor touches them. They will turn off if they touch any of the blue sprites. When all the waypoint sprites are turned on it initiates an event. The player MUST draw some semblance of a circle in order for all the waypoint sprites to be turned on at the same time. See easy?

So now, theoretically, I could make a square or a triangle or any other shape I want with this same premise. Or I could even have smaller circles cause different events.

Something I thought about implementing (but didn't do) was to try scaling. So that the size of the invisible sprite group would change according to how far the mouse is moved, so that a circle could be drawn at any size, so long as it was a circle. It was about 2 or 3 events too much work for me, though. haha. It could be done like that too though.

Nice, thanks for the explanation

New version up!

http://www.jasonkoohi.com/blue__11-12-09.zip

Controls so far:

draw a circle with the mouse - Make a storm

press K - Kite flies by

Press B - Birds fly by

press A - airplane flies by

Numbers 1-9 do different atmosphere colors (1-4 go from daytime to nighttime sequentially)

These are just pieces of the game. Now I need to assemble them into something that is fun. For instance, i need to have a new gesture to make the plane fly by, or something. The environment is looking how i want it to, but it needs gameplay to work. That's next on my to-do list.

It would be awesome if you could find some way to allow you to draw a circle of any size and create a thunderstorm.