Stupid Starfield

It is amazing how much work or time can go into what appear to be the simplest things.

Take the background starfield for the Space Invaliens game. Should be easy right? A few textures scrolling over each other at different speeds should look great. Only it appears that certain speeds do not look so hot. Also if the parallax layers are not matched up sin some way they also look odd.

I now have controls built into my app so I can live change the speed of the layers and the ratio of speed differences between them. So instead of simply writing the starfield and it looking good in 10 minutes. I have written code to allow me to live change values. Which is a whole lot more work.

the really annoying thing is.. I am still not sure what speed to go with, slow and steady graphically looks great, but fast and furious enhances the frenetic or dangerous feel to the game. Of course I may just alter the speed of the stars dynamically while you play the level. Though I have not yet tried this as I am not sure what criteria I should use to determine if it should be going fast or slow. Is it due to your health level? Nah! Is it maybe due to the health level of the aliens on screen? Hmm, not sure how best to evaluate that. Faster the more healthy they are? Nah!

I will try to get a video of this on my iPad at some point soon along with the myriad other things I have changed, as frapsing it on my PC isn't working well enough speed wise at the moment.

My last comment here is that I now have some information on my Book Apps free weekend download and what the numbers are. So will be posting that up most likely tomorrow when I have today's sales information.

Laters
Da Voodoochief