Rest In Peace, Accelerometer, We Hardly Knew Ye

The accelerometer controls just weren't cutting it. I tweaked and fiddled and even tried to optimise a bit, but in the end the inaccuracy and lag was just no fun. In a twitchy arcade style game, laggy and imprecise controls are death, so they regrettably got the chop. Now they lie dormant, commented out like so many other shelved ideas.

In other general progress news (on my end):

• FlexGlobals are in place to make overall app settings and cross-view data a bit easier.
• There is a "game over" state (view, technically) which displays your score, tells you whether you got a high score (by consulting a global highscore XML object) and gives you some nav options.
• The highscores table works, and while the game is being played new scores can be added to it. There is still no read/write using an external XML file, but the way is well paved for it.
• Some bugs ironed out with traffic collisions, generally it's now fun and makes sense. This is tron-style stuff so there are no explosions, it's much more a bumper cars feel.

Sam has been polishing up the other views, my High Scores and Game Over views are coded skeletons and he is adding the visual detail and cohesiveness. Ken has all the cars drawn, and has started the tracks. We have also given him the all important task of making a HUD image to plaster across the bottom of the screen to house all our game information to hopefully let the player understand things better. A good deal of time was spent finally nailing this down today, as we had been going back and forth with ideas and concerns and changes of heart for ages. Even on an iPad screen, information presentation is tricky, and my games do have a tendency to have abstract mechanics and values that need good visual cues to be well understood by the player. Our design for this is exciting though, and I think will enhance the feel of the game dramatically.

The only major things still lurking unfinished are power ups and the codes/options screen for add-ons. Power ups are tricky in that they need to hook into many different areas of code to be effective at tweaking the game rules. They may also require timers, and display of timer information to the player in some cases. We have a raft of powerup ideas, but at this stage of sweeping compromise I expect to be going with the simplest and most elegant of these ideas. Things like a quick speed boost or the ability to fly over other cars. The codes screen is coming along, but needs to actually integrate with the game to change what car image is used (and the cars stats) and what powerups will appear on the road. Obviously this needs the powerups to function too...