TurtleBrains Interface Kit
"Always Growing" better tools for developing 2D games was my take on the theme, not much a game but still an entry.
This is an unranked 72 hour Alakajam entry that is not quite a game. Instead I took a different take on the theme and went to work jamming away on my User Interface kit for Turtle Brains a C++ framework for rapid 2D game development. In 72 hours the TurtleBrains Express Interface kit was created and I used my summer project; Rally of Rockets as a testing area.
Initially the plan was to get all the ui menus in Rally of Rockets mocked up and some parts with basic functionality but in the end I took too much time near the end adding new Input defintions to TurtleBrains.
This is an Alakajam entry that is extending an existing project, hence part of unranked division. Only the Title Scene menu, Settings Scene were created during the weekend (along with all the interface objects on those screens). The gameplay in solo testing was done prior to the game weekend and should be ignored for purposes of Alakajam
feedback.
Comments (5)
Yay I got to play Rally of Rockets! I didn't expect actual gameplay so it was a pleasant bonus. And a good way to get an update on the game progress as I was looking for :) Before speaking of the UI, I've gotta say i'm quite pleasantly surprised with the car physics, and in particular how we can easily recover from getting upside down. My main wish would have been for a higher top speed.
UI wise from what I see it looks pretty much functional. The main issues I see are with text alignment on the checkboxes, and text overflowing on the text input. Also some green on green stuff on the sliders but I've gotta find stuff to talk about :P
Also, a trickier thing is that when using mouse navigation, keeping the last element highlighted even when it's no longer hovered looks strange. A solution I could see is to distinguish the "last focused" element from the "hovered" one (the latter being the info used for highlighting). When using keyboard the two would always be identical, but with the mouse they could differ if we're no longer hovering anything. In that situation, if we switch to keyboard use, the first key press would restore the "hovered" data from the "last focused" info. If that makes any sense!
Thanks for giving the feedback. The glaring issues you pointed out were known and only made to test functionality; actual graphical content/colors clearly need changing (green on green). The TextBox needs a maximum size count and that will fix the overflow via making it a "design" problem, same with a few other things.
The mouse navigation, I definitely see the argument you make, however I also feel it is a bit wierd to have both a "highlighted" and "focused" state. At present I don't think I will make this adjustment, seems complex, but others were noting it on stream and I will definitely keep it up for consideration. Thanks again for giving the UI kit a run through!
Higher top speed is definitely planned, out of curiousity did you find/initiate a drift? In that build Z is a fake handbrake, doesn't decrease speed, that allows drifting to be initiated. This charges a boost bar and after the drift is automatically boosted unless throttle is released. X key also fires off a rocket/missile.
Since this is the first time we get a such entry, I'd like to confirm that submitting work on a long-term project like @timbeaudet just did is an acceptable way to enter the Unranked jam! (See "Unranked division" part of the Alakajam! rules)