Development Cycle

The Plan for the next few days of Quartz The Game Development:
Designing, Programming, Testing, Programming, Re-Designing, Nap, Red Bull, More Programming, Graphics...

But seriously, the plan for the next few days is to get this game up and running in demo format.

Set up shop
Get all the Program essentials installed and raring to go.
I've decided on to develop with Flash and create graphics with Illustrator and Photoshop. No big surprises there.

Hello World
Set up the World and base class for a Quart.
Draw a Quart to screen.
Set up Quart Movement Behaviour: Just drop straight down for now and only when it hits the bottom of the screen.

Welcome Friends
Add more Quartz to the world.
Have them fall until they land on the Quartz below. - Or the Ground
This should be done in the update so even when they are staying perfectly still - they are rearing to go! or Drop as the case may be!

Delete Me
Remove a Quart from the world when it's clicked on. In theory, any Quartz above should automatically drop down until the hit another.

Technicolour Dream-Quart
Upload a temporary spritesheet image of the a few different quartz lined up.
Depending on the colour needed, display the correct quart from the spritesheet.

Shoulder to Shoulder
Add a second Column of Quartz with the same functionality as the first.
Edit the remove Quart behaviour so it also deletes when two quartz of the same colour line up!
That goes for Up and Down as well as Left and Right!

Pick Me!
Draw a semi-transparent Rectangle around a Quart when it is clicked on - oh, remove the delete Quart when clicked on behaviour first!

So Far
At that stage we should have a demo of two columns of Quartz that appear from the top in a random order, and fall until they hit the bottom of the screen.
Clicking on them will Highlight them and should any two colours touch, they are deleted from the world making way for the above Quartz to fall!

We'll see how things go!

Sketch Up

A Quick Sketch of what we're looking to build.

Basic Tower Play Area and Information Side Bar.

The blocks should fall from the top (off screen) and fill up the level's play area in a random colour order.

Score is self explanatory: Every match the player makes will earn them set points.

Multipliers are earned by clocking up a high number of matching in one move, multiplying the total score earned for that move.

Time: the longer it takes to complete the level, the higher the total game score deduction at the end of the game.

Coming Up Next:
Tasks break down and Development Plan - Stay Tuned!

Hello World!

Hi all and welcome to the Quartz Blog.

The idea is to Design, Develop, and Log a prototype Flash game and then port it to a mobile device, be it an Android or iPhone/iPad.

Quartz is a block based puzzle game in which players swap adjacent coloured blocks in roder to match three in a row horizontally or vertically and clock up a high score while doing do.

I'll be keeping this blog throughout the coming weeks recording the development process and uploading any updates so stay tuned!

Michael