Played through New Super Mario Bros. on the DS (had to send the Wii in for repairs) and took some notes. I wasn’t planning on sharing but a few people expressed interest. These are mostly hastily scrawled, poorly spelled, shorthand. The most surprising thing I discovered during this playthrough was that every. single. level. introduced something new (an enemy type, an interactive element, a skill chain) or took safeties away (water replaced with poison bog, clouds with a bottomless pit) to raise the challenge and keep things interesting. 80 levels of novelty. I’ve been maintaining that Mimeo will be on par with a console or handheld game. Even my goal of 32 levels seems daunting held to these standards.
- Page 1 (shown above)
- Pages 2-3
- Pages 4-5
- Pages 6-7
- Pages 8-9
- Pages 10-11
- Pages 12-13
- Pages 14-15
- Pages 16-17
The last page and a half of notes are just the titles of the development team and number of people in each role. Around 60 individuals. Holiday 2010 is breathing down my neck.
Today I’m starting on the next version of Mapt, the web-based Mimeoverse level editor. This is a short demo of the inelegant, current version. For posterity. The new version will streamline the level creation process and with a little luck even be usable on an iPad. (But don’t get your hopes up, even though the editor is web-based, I’m not planning on user-generated content for the first Mimeoverse game.)
Man, that’s an ugly video.
Getting serious mileage out of my ground tiles with some judicious palette swapping. Got a few assets done for plain/grassland levels including cloud platforms and moss-covered blocks.
And with that Mimeo has been completely iPadized! Now to finish (start) the level editor so I can build out the game.
(At about 38 seconds in you can start seeing Mimeo jump out of the viewport but not disappear. I was originally going to mask above and below the play area but I think I like the effect. Same thing happens when you fall in a hole too.)
Had some time today to improve Mimeo on the iPad. Things I don’t mention in the video: the HUD is still in the wrong position; both the iPhone and iPad have (and more importantly use) their own device-specific icons for both the app itself and Spotlight search results; I’m thinking of masking the widescreen edges during transitions. Oh and picking up the iPod touch was spur of the moment. Fortunately, the volume was already muted.
I forgot probably the biggest thing: both versions use the same assets so you won’t be walking around with iPad-sized assets in your pocket on your iPhone. And upscaling is nearest neighbor so even though you can’t see it in the video, iPad graphics are just as crisp as its iPhone counterpart.
First pass at the iPad controller overlay and a revised iPhone/iPod touch overlay. The iPad version will be “widescreen” (one extra column of tiles on the right) with glorious 4x4 pixels while the iPhone/iPod touch remain a fun-sized 2x2. The controller overlays will be the same physical size regardless of device.
The initial (largely) unmodified build of Mimeo on the iPad is promising—no where near perfect but promising none the less. (Now on YouTube ‘cause I heard you liked to watch the iPad on your iPad dog.)
Dribbble is open to the public. Now you can steal a look at the beginning of Mimeo’s development. This is an early 2-bit animated version of Gaido, Mimeo’s sidekick and guide in the Kleptopus Kingdom.
Worked out some assets for the underground levels last week. Mimeo is standing on the underground version of one-way platform. Behind the Narwhelp is a moving girder and below that a tar pit.
A quick play through of the sample level I brought with me to SXSW last week. With commentary.
