Art style

In order to update you guys, I'll go into a bit of detail about the only thing I've decided this early on in the game's development - the art style.

I've been looking through a lot of art blogs for combinations of colours or styles that I really like, but it all comes down to a really bright, colourful and cartoony game.  With such small screens it becomes incredibly important to be able to easily distinguish what's on the screen, and the best way to do that will be to have things flashing with big bold colours.

Not to mention the bomberman franchise was really awesome until they decided to take a more serious twist (see Bomberman: Act Zero).  Even their newer games are pretty cool after they switched back to the classic cartoony style.

That leaves us with a few other questions:

• What will the characters look like?
• What will replace "bombs"?
• What locations will the battles take place in?
• Will the game be 3D?

I was thinking of having big headded characters because... well mostly because characters with big heads should make it easier to see which tile your character is taking up, because it looks cartoony and because you should be able to see your character's colour (the thing that identifies you best) clearly.

I was thinking that  a head shape similar to Katamari's might be useful - basically something similar to that.

For bombs, I have no idea what should replace them.  Willing to hear suggestions! Something large and that changes over time to show that it's "in play".

For locations, I'm thinking places that kids go for fun to keep up with the lively, happy theme.  Places like carnivals and movie theatres, though I was also thinking of taking some scenery that is reminiscent of some more popular videogames (maybe a map with a large ring in the centre for halo fans).

The game will not be in 3D.  There's no reason to change camera angles, it's harder on the phone and if you take a 3D isometric view, it would probably be a disadvantage the players who start on the far side of the board.

Non-programming considerations

Alrighty then, update time.  So while I've been reading my books, I've been going through some stuff that I'm going to have to consider over the next while, to set up a list of things I'll be talking about in future posts.

1. Hardware considerations.  With all of the available screen sizes, input types and processing power available for android, it becomes more difficult to decide what should go where in an android app.  This may mean separating out views and controls from the game logic to allow more hardware.

2. Network concerns.  Depending on how much actual information needs to be passed around and the timing of how things would be passed, it may be necessary to host a server to store game information.  This is also in interesting problem when you consider the hardware that android is available on because people with more powerful android phones shouldn't have an advantage over weaker phones.

3. Art style.  I'm thinking of using a very bright and cartoony style for the graphics, but I'm open to suggestions.

4. Name.  Probably goes with the art style, but can't be named "bomberman" for sure.

5. Updates.  How should we design the game such that it will be able to apply updates easily and effectively?

All these coming up in detail in future posts!