Almost Done

The beta version of Jumpman Forever for the Ouya is almost done.  I’ve still got three more levels to finish tweaking and testing for the secondary character, Red.  That will occupy most of tomorrow, I’m sure.

And, well, I think Red’s levels didn’t actually really come together until today.  I kept feeling like something was missing, so, I played with a concept I had much earlier in development that I hadn’t gotten around to implementing.  Jumpman is often harassed by “Alienator Smart Bullets” (well, they aren’t that smart, really) that are little white spheres that travel slowly across the screen until they line up with him.  Once they do, they shoot out at double speed to try and hit the character.

Red has the same thing, sort of.  She now has red balls that attack – Alienator Smart Bullets 2.0.  These are more reactive with the environment, and finally add a little extra meaning to the various colored girders.  When a red smart bullet attacks Red, it explodes when it hits a green girder, which means moving quickly to finish a level is important.  The longer you take, the harder the level becomes.  The red bullets also react with red and blue girders differently, but, I’ll let players discover what happens along the way – each girder type reacts differently to the red bullets.

This makes gameplay between Jumpman and Red levels sufficiently different, and Red’s levels are now fairly difficult without being overwhelming.  I’m pretty damned happy 🙂

After the last three sets of level tweaks comes UI changes, and finally, replacing the last of the sound effects.  Then it’s time to button it up and send it off to Ouya 🙂

Finally Get To Try My ‘New’ Bicycle

Today was a gorgeous day in Kansas.  When my wife got home, she asked if I wanted to go on a bike ride, and I was all for it 🙂

A couple months back I bought a new bike at a garage sale.  It was ridden by someone who knew how to take care of a bicycle, and it was properly tuned.  It’s completely unlike my previous Walmart bike, which was poorly tuned, and I had to adjust it all the time.  Taking it for a ride today was a joy – the gears are stiff, but, the chain doesn’t jump off.  The breaks work great.  And there’s a whole lot less drag on this one than on the other bike (partially because of the type of tires on it.)

Tomorrow my Basis fitness band will show up (Kat and I bought a pair for Valentine’s Day – they had a really good sale going on), so hopefully there’s some time in the future where I can start riding daily and monitoring the results 🙂