Design Plan Approved!

Hello everyone! Since last time, we've mostly done prep work. We acquired the movie, we brushed up on game design and pixel art, and we started learning libgdx. Libgdx is an open-source library that allows for easy cross-platform distribution of games. While it's new to us, and our capstone course is about developing Android apps, we want this game to be accessible by as many people as possible.

The big news is that this week, Zach and I met with Estlin Feigley in the Fresh Films office on the Augustana campus. We pitched a general design plan that the entire team came up with through brainstorming. He approved the plan, so we can now begin developing the app and tweak things as we go.

"Tiger Trap" as it appears in Traveling Without Moving

The objective of the game is to make it through as many levels as you can. When you fail, you can quickly start back at level one. Each level has a time limit in which you must capture the tiger, which is moving around the screen on its own, with a trap that you control via arrows on the touch screen. When you have the trap under the tiger, you must hit "trap" before the tiger moves away. Doing so moves you on to the next level, which is more difficult (perhaps due to the tiger moving faster or jumping more, or due to a shorter time limit). Each tiger is worth a certain number of points, which can be used to buy power-ups (perhaps a tranquilizer that slows down the tiger, or an upgrade for your trap that allows it to capture the tiger automatically for a period of time). If you play well enough (say, capturing the tiger very quickly), a mini-game will come up where you can capture as many tigers as you can to boost your points. 

We'd also like to implement an optional tutorial level or demo with a bunny rabbit instead of a tiger. Seem random and silly? Not really. It's a call forward to something more sinister... but that's a topic for another time. You'll just have to stay tuned.