Making Frozen Bubble
What is it ?
Time-ordered "making-of" for first version of Frozen-Bubble where you can see screenshots at different steps of the development of the game! This is hard to show programming and music/sound changes here, but you can get the general feeling anyway :-).
[2001-10-31] After a few days of work, the first working prototype (where "bubbles" are actually the CD-ROM icon from KDE with a modified hue ;p). We can already decide for the size of bubbles and location of playground. |
[2001-11-01] First background by our superb graphist ayo73. This has already a better look indeed! |
[2001-11-06] Bubbles, pinguins and igloos designed by Ayo. This is cuuute ;p. |
[2001-11-07] More coloured bubbles, a location to print scores, and the two nice small Ayo-pinguins at the top. |
[2001-11-07] Trying a first solution for the shooter: a sort of "canon" over the to-be-launched bubble. |
[2001-11-07] Trying a second solution for the shooter: a canon "sender" below the bubble. |
[2001-11-08] A more definitive version of the canon-launcher, and the design of the "machinery" beside next bubble. |
[2001-11-08] I can send the "malus" bubbles, the "functionality" of the game is nearly finished! |
[2001-11-12] New bubbles without alpha (I can't have alpha on the bubbles because of.. well in two words, for speed), finished version of the sender-canon-machinery with some wood material, quite nice. Now Ayo-pinguins are different (purple/green) and located at different places. |
[2001-11-12] Trying arrows for the launcher. |
[2001-11-13] Setting up a prelight on bubbles (using a whole white bubble for a beginning) (it's used for when the bubbles shake, in the original game). |
[2001-11-13] Integrating Amaury's new bubbles, with Ayo's prelight effect (yellow light on last column of left player). |
[2001-11-13] Implementing the end of the game, where all bubbles of the loser "transform to stone" from the bottom to the top of the screen. This is 2 minutes of coding but actually the visual effect is pretty nice :-). |
[2001-11-13] Amaury changed his brown bubbles for black ones which I don't like at all (I think they're too different from the rest). We now use a less soft background to enhance contrast of the whole. |
[2001-11-14] He tries to move black bubbles to less dark ones, but now they have two colors and it doesn't look vastly better :-(. "Next" bubble now has a wood planch above it, yet it's a bit too large I think. |
[2001-11-14] Actually the planch was designed to be located here (while I'm still not convinced...). I can now print the scores, also. |
[2001-11-14] Implementing the "hurry" mechanism, where the computer throws the bubble of a player if he doesn't do it after 7 seconds -- and I drawed the logo with Gimp ;p. |
[2001-11-15] Updated black and white bubbles from Amaury (this time they look really perfect for me), Ayo changed the planch by a grid on top of "Next" bubble, I implemented a "Pause" (and drawed again the graphics ;p) (and I had headache debugging a SDL_Surface problem but this doesn't show on the screenshot...). Contrast is enhanced, blurring disappears at the top of the screen, and two planches are used to show 1p and 2p fields. |
[2001-11-19] A better-looking "hurry" graph. I can animate the falling bubbles, too!! |
[2001-11-19] A better-looking "pause" graph. |
[2001-11-19] Finally the "hurry" will look like that. Pretty :-). |
[2001-11-19] Yo, I can animate the "destroying" bubbles, it's uber cool... |
[2001-11-22] At the end of the game, I "destroy" winner's bubbles, this looks real nice! |
[2001-11-28] A title screen from Ayo... |
[2001-11-28] A very nice penguin-oriented transparent thingy for the pause. |
[2001-11-28] Check winner's penguin animation :-). |
[2001-11-28] First incarnation of the single-player game mode, rather beautiful IMO ! |
[2001-12-02] When you lose, your bubbles freeze now. |
[2001-12-02] Redrawn "malus" symbols (well, bananas and tomatoes for me). |
[2001-12-02] Transparent freezing effect. |
[2001-12-02] Now we have many many levels for single-player, you can get addicted and play during long winter evenings :-). |
[2001-12-03] Single player "compressor". |
[2001-12-03] Second version of the compressor. |
[2001-12-05] Final version of the compressor. |
[2001-12-07] The eighth bubble arrives, it's the orange one. |
[2001-12-11] New frozen effect. |
[2001-12-11] Now there are realtime graphical effects between game screen changes, this one is the "blind" effect ("store" in french). |
[2001-12-11] Apparition of image driven by a plasma. |
[2001-12-12] A menu to start the game -- final graphics for menu actions are still to be done of course. It saves your chosen options for next game. |
[2001-12-12] Rebind your keys! |
[2001-12-14] Better menu graphics... |
[2001-12-16] ...with background also... |
[2001-12-17] ...even with an horizontal scrolling... |
[2002-01-22] ...well this is the nearly final version. |
[2002-01-24] The scrolling is now on a small planch, pretty nice. |
[2002-01-25] Adding the highscores to the menu, with better looking scrolling graphics. |
[2002-01-25] The highscores show you small "screenshots" of the levels, very pretty! |