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New Personal Project: Quest Log Alpha

 in Tech  tagged app

Well, “new” as in I haven’t posted anything about it yet. This is something I am working on in my own time, and surprisingly, it is not a game. Well, mostly at least.

Overview

I like the aesthetic of lists, planners, etc., but in the digital age they are not as prevalent. I stopped carrying planners once I started using a calendar app. However, I still want to keep track of stuff to do. Hence, the hunt for a good task app.

I couldn’t find one. That is, I couldn’t find one that did everything I required of one. Here’s what would happen: I would use an app regularly for a month or two, then its quirks would cause me to procrastinate opening it, and then I would stop using it altogether. So, like many people, I decided I wanted my own todo app. It was time to dust off those app-making skills!

Specifications

So, I want my own app. What is needed for me to keep using an app?

  1. Opens instantly
    Something that quickly puts me off using a productivity app is if it takes more than no time to open. If there are ads or a loading screen, I give up. I need something that I can quickly pull out, enter some data, and tuck away.
    This means that I couldn’t use my beloved familiar tool of Unity to make this.* I landed instead on Android Studio.
  2. Working notifications
    My favorite of the todo apps I tried had been abandoned for years, and unfortunately had a bug with its notifications. As someone who forgets things, that was a no for me.
  3. Minimal overhead
    The great thing about technology is that you can get it to do lots of stuff for you. The more stuff I don’t have to spend time doing, the more likely I am to continue using it.

Great! Now what do I want?

  1. Something fun
    Ah yes, the easiest thing to accomplish. That bit of extra motivation to be productive — I’d be designing some sort of gamification to use on myself. Simple!
  2. Something easy
    Related to the need for minimal overhead, clean and intuitive UI is soothing in an app. This one is actually easier, since I’ll know the UI inside out, and don’t have another user to think about.**

* The free version of Unity has a splash screen that lasts several seconds long on all of its applications.
** Which is a very, very weird feeling for someone who almost exclusively makes for others. I still catch myself thinking “Well, this might be confusing for a user unfamiliar with– Wait a minute!”

Looks

With these needs and wants in mind, I set out to design it. I decided to use XD, since it looked fun. I also tried a bit of Figma, and that was also fun. They are very similar. They are fantastic for setting up basic UI and creating prototypes, and there are many templates with Android UI components (appbars, etc) you can get for free.

With looks, the basic goals are:

  1. Adheres to common app design specs
    Many apps use a similar interface that I am used to. If I don’t have to think about how to perform an action, that will be faster and cause less fatigue.
  2. Easy to parse
    I don’t want an app that’s too visually noisy. One of my earlier iterations had tags showing up in different colors, and while it was pretty, it was difficult to figure out what was going on at a glance.
  3. Simple color palette
  4. Thematic
    I want it to be like an RPG quest log, so ideally it’d look like a scroll or book. I want the UX to reflect this, also. This particular change is more of a goal for the future — in the meantime, I’m just using some of my favorite colors for the palette. (This, however, is why the mockup uses serif fonts).

I’ll avoid going into too much detail on features, since the mock designs don’t fully match what the app will be (story of my life), but I thought I’d share the super basic prototype. I set this up to quickly test out some UX ideas — some of it is good, some I ended up iterating on quite a bit. As I flesh out my app, the vision may change. In the meantime, the prototype is up on my projects page!

Gobble Ghost! Ludum Dare 45

 in Uncategorized

I initially thought I would be working alone for this jam, but during a tour of local tech companies, I ran into a friend of mine and discovered that he, too, was interested in participating in Ludum Dare this time around. Since we had teamed up before, we decided to do so again.

Ludum Dare, when in teams, is a 72-hour jam. I did not realize this at first. As such I was scrambling for an idea and features that would fit a 48-hour scope. With jams, I tend to reach for simple and sweet. In other words, old flash games are a large part of my inspiration. They have a relatively short and repeatable game loop, so if the gameplay is sufficiently different each time, you can get a lot of mileage out of it. I went for a simple “Eat and Grow” idea, with some flair. The name “Gobble Ghost!” came into being.

The errant scramble for time ended up being great for the game, as we could dedicate that last day to polish and fix features. We also did not get the full 72 hours to work, so ultimately I’m pretty proud of what we accomplished. Thanks to some mutual contacts we were able to get adorable art and Halloween-y sounds, which makes a much better experience for a game like ours.

Here is a link to the jam page. The web link to play it can be found under the “Download and Links” header. Or, to skip exposition, you can play it directly on my site.

Global Game Jam 2019

 in Entertainment / Tech  tagged game jams / games / technology / video games
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^ We received these hip badges after the end of the jam

I participated in January’s Global Game Jam! This was my first game jam as an official participant and it was an amazing experience. Besides me (programmer/designer), my team had an artist, an audio person, a designer, and another programmer. I knew half the other members of the team, so it was a nice mix of familiarity and new faces.

I jammed at a site that was organized by the local game development community  here in Oregon (which is where I work now, as a game designer). You can check out the game we made, Third Time’s the Charm, on the GGJ 2019 project site. We intended it to be mobile/web, but with the time crunch the windows build was the only one we got working in time. Such is the nature of the jam!

Several of our team members expressed interest in expanding what we created into the grand design we desired. I would love to continue working on it (even if it’s just to get a mobile build working) in the future.

At the end of the jam, everyone who participated on the site showed off their games. It was super cool to see how each team interpreted the theme (What Home Means to You). I was particularly interested in the projects that used AirConsole. Really got the idea machine churning. Looking forward to sitting down and playing games from other jam sites!