Polish Festival

Mmm, Polish Sausages.

To avoid future ambiguities, Poland should start spelling with two Ls. "Pollish People Use Polish." Makes sense.. Poll -> Pollish...

I've been working on the big to-do list from my last post and I've gotten quite a bit done so far.

One of the things on the list was to make some new screenshots. That was a bit misleading; I actually need a 100x100 pixel "thumbnail" that encapsulates what the game is for easy browsing. Most flash games have this - an icon or a logo of some sort.

I really hate making these kinds of things - I'd rather people just play! But visual guides are handy and they sell well. Here's what I came up with:

Nice, simple, and to the point. Incorporates the Space Squid textual logo as well as the squid and the star, the two primary elements of the game. PLUS IT LOOKS OH SO CUTE,  AWWWWWWW

Some other things I cleaned up in this latest update, build number 45:

• Returned the main menu destruction and properly focused the game upon instanciation. I was even able to answer my own Stack Overflow question for this one.
• Rewrote the main menu and all the instruction slides. Now it's more uniform and coherent.
• Reworked the "Click for More" icon.
• Fiddled with the colors of the fishtank - I'm not sure if I like this and might change it again.
• I played with the yellow of the boost bar for around 20 minutes but I kept settling on the yellow again. I made the yellow bit slightly thinner just to say I made progress and left it at that.
• Made sure the squid's cute little face is always the topmost component - no more obscuring his face with his arms. We wanna see that smile!
• Made the first segment of his short arms a little thicker - they were narrower than the tips which made them look a little goofy.
• Looked into the short arms "Drooping" - unfortunately I'm not going to be able to fix this by release date. I currently have buoyancy turned off for the arms - which means they just sag with gravity - but if I turn on buoyancy the swimming dynamic is completely thrown off for the rest of the squid. I'd have to rework all the weight and thrust values which will take me a long time. I figure it's a tiny detail - might as well let this one slide.
• Changed the hud score display colors to a base blue. I really like how it looks this way! I don't know why I picked purple to start with...
• Removed the border around the high score name input boxes and made them wider, and left-justified them so they don't act silly when you're typing away.
• Turned off stats and rankings for "Anonymous," and replaced them with a sign urging people to sign in. It still records Anonymous scores and ranks them on the website though.
• Replaced the story text with game mode description text. This will be more handy, and noone will read the story anyway.
• It came to my attention that on any computer without the "Elements" font installed, the countdown timer and score displays were using Times New Roman. That's lame. I think I fixed that now though.
• Made a new faded-yellow "Galactic Premonition" (preview star).
• Made sure the EndGame boxes show up over top of everything else.

I'm going to spend a chunk of the rest of the day today working on the HighScore displays on the website, so those should be looking nicer and nicer as time goes on.

You can play Space Squid here!

I also realized that there is no real "industry" in Victoria and I don't know enough people to throw a launch party. So here's what it is: I'm going to the nearest pub, I'm going to eat calamari and get drunk. If anyone reading this wants to join me, drop me a line.