Stylized Card

I just had an interesting new thought about Dangerous Apples' graphic design. For one of my school assignments, I am using DA's card background graphic in an Adobe Illustrator file. I had to convert this graphic, which is raster-based, into a vector-based format so Illustrator could rotate it. At one point during the conversion, I accidentally left the number of colors to use at 6 instead of using the maximum 256 colors. It sounds like it could've been a disaster, but I actually really liked the results.

For the purpose of comparison, here's the original graphic that I drew next to the graphic that Illustrator produced:



I really like the second one. It just seems to be a lot more organic. It has a lot of subtle variations and assymetries in the thickness and shape of lines, and even the placement of elements. The shadow and highlight on the apple look really great too. Even though it's a lot fewer colors, it looks really good and stylized that way. I think it fits the theme of the game as a fun, almost cartoony diversion. I'd love to see the card logo animated too, maybe the stem does a little dance and the highlight bounces up and down in rhythm.

Now I'm not about to go changing the page design again. I've already given it one facelift before it was even finished, and I plan on leaving it at that. But it's something to think about for the future. I also have to say that as great as this looks, it's not good for my ego that I just got out-arted by a piece of software, despite how much time and effort I put into my own attempt. (However, it could be argued that the software itself did nothing, it was only guided by my skillful and judicious hand. I'm going to take that interpretation and run with it.)

Apples on Apples

The other day I was able to get Dangerous Apples working perfectly on Mac OS X (with Firefox, naturally). This is important, because a lot of people around here have Macs and I have a feeling that a lot of my testing is going to have to be on a Mac. I also finally fixed up IE 6 and its PNG display issues, so that basically just leaves IE 7 as the last platform I'd like to support, and that seemed OK too once I figured out that it doesn't like port numbers (which is unfathomable to me, but that's neither here nor there). I'll have to test more though.

More to come later! This is a very exciting time in the development process.

Big progress update

I just played Dangerous Apples with myself (well, two copies of me) for four rounds. Even though it died when I tried to play a card in the fifth round (the reasons for which I have not ascertained yet), I think this is a great step forward. After I figure out why it died and polish it a bit, I think it might be just about ready for initial testing!

...but I'm still not going to give an answer when it'll be done.

Red cards on table

One of the interesting decisions involved with porting any system to a computer for the first time is figuring out whether to completely replicate the old system, down to the finest detail, or to redesign it using the added benefits of a computer. For instance, if you were writing a computer program to call people, you could duplicate the way it's done on a telephone, by entering in the phone number, or you could redesign it specifically for the computer, using an address book or something similar. Do you stick with what people already know and are familiar with, or do you try to correct the flaws in the old design and make something new and better?

I've recently run into this kind of decision for A2A; specifically, I'm looking at what happens when people play red cards. I have a "table" area of the screen where you can see the red cards that have been played, and this is also where the judge picks the winning red card. Now, when anyone plays a red card, it will show up on the table, but what I realized is that, unlike the real Apples to Apples, I can show which red card it is as soon as it gets played. In the real game, you see people as they are playing cards, so revealing a card immediately would also reveal who played it. However, since this is an online game, you do not see people as they play cards, so everyone's identity is protected. This means that I can reveal the exact red cards as soon as they are played. I'm interested in how this change might affect the game play. Will it be amusing to see the cards immediately? Will people rethink their plays if they see what other people have played? Is it worth knowing who has played already? The good news is, it's not that hard to whip up two different versions of the game, one that mimics the original game and doesn't reveal red cards until everyone has played, and one that shows the red cards immediately, so I can test both.

Also, I've renamed the blog to "Dangerous Apples" instead of "Apples to AJAX" since I'm using that name on the current design. I'm heavily leaning towards "Dangerous Apples" for the final project. The blog will stay at the same URL, though.