From the lack of regular posts and updates it might seem like there is not much happening in our team and with The Great Wobo Escape. Nothing is more far from truth.
For the last 3 months we were able to put solid number of hours into the development. Let me list a few updates and achievements worth mentioning. Besides these, there is an ongoing bug hunt happening regularly. We don’t apply for getting any extra credit for it (nobody ever received special price for that), but it seems that the ongoing polishment starts to bring its fruits. Game is continually getting smoother to play, has more FPS, prettier looking and richer of visuals to look at.
Save system
Running a game on a tablet brings several new challenges into saving a game and all progress. Your game can be interrupted by an incoming phone call or text message anytime. When you go back into the game, you somehow naturally expect to find everything just where you left it – in the same state. This was a trigger point for a bit broader functionality – save game and checkpoint system. You should be able to save manually (more on that later) and when you advance through each level, you should alsoi trigger also checkpoints automatically. It would be frustrating and time consuming to start over in a case of Game Over.
For the manual saving, we have created a designated object in the game that integrates seamlessly. Think of Vita-Chambers in Bioshock. Fully animated with some special effects, of course.
Basic menus (3rd iteration)
We started with super simple menu elements on March. These were just for concept proof - ugly, blue hexagon placeholders. Second iteration during summer upgraded these little elements into something more visually attractive. But only the last iteration in October/November styled the GUI into a diesel-punk inspired set of controls, with some internal movement to gears, sparkling electric cables, pretty on/off
animations – a truly visual delicatess.
New objects
Save Game Point, Security Scanner, Lift Capsule, Computer Racks. All of them will be (or already are) published on our Twitter, Facebook and/or in the gallery of images.
No walking
To speed up the gameplay we decided to ditch walking completely. It started only as an idea but thanks to a neat code (Thanks Dave!) it has been a super simple change. Only stealth (Wobo is hard to detect, slightly bended and moving slowly) and run (quite quickly, actually) is now available. Based on the feedback from a few testers, it has been received very positively! It seems like there was no real need to just walk for the main character.
Windows RT build
Thanks to our previous successes in Microsoft Imagine Cup, we have WinRT tablets available. Why not use them now for testing, right? Well, not that quick! This OS has some specifics and it took some effort to make TGWE run on the WinRT but now we can say we are really multiplatform (previously just PC and Android). The development and testing will continue on 3 platforms simultaneously. Sorry, no plans to publish on WinRT just yet, only testing.
