Teeter Torture - Developer Diary

August 6, 2005

• I saw the game for the first time at California Extreme (a large video game and pinball machine show), and decided I'd try to clone it.

August 7, 2005

• Using a photo of the original, I created a 640x480 mock-up of what the game should look like.
• I created all the artwork by hand in The Gimp (the layered, native Gimp format files will be found in the "src/images/" directory of the source release)

August 8, 2005

• I create the main setup routines for the application.
• I got the cannon to appear on the screen, and move left and right via the keyboard or mouse.
• I tried to simulate the feel of the spinner control that the arcade game had. (It was similar to a track-ball that only spun left and right, like the game "Kick" had.)
• Then I created the teeter totter, and had the cannon weigh it down.

August 9, 2005

• Spent some time at lunch putting together the stubs for the web page.
• Monsters now appear at the top, and fall randomly.
• Monsters stick to the teeter totter and weigh it down.
• I added a bullet with which to shoot the monsters.
• If a monster touches the cannon, it explodes. (A little pixel/particle effect... and the bits bounce on the teeter totter, which looks cool!)
• Shooting monsters causes similar particles to appear.
• I got most of the remaining scenery drawn (TNT barrel, detonators, plungers which go down when the teeter totter presses on them).
• Shooting all of the monsters advances to the next level. (Monsters attached to the teeter totter remain, like in the original.)
• What to do when all of the monsters attach themselves? I decided to simply advance to the next level, and reset all of the monsters to the top.
• Finally, if the teeter totter pushes one of the detonator plungers in all the way, *BOOM!* I created a rather simple "exploding screen" effect by taking the bottom center ~80% of the screen and blitting it back on the screen to fill up 100%. Instant cheap, low-quality zoom effect.
• Add some random placement of the zoomed bits, and random tinting of red/yellow at random degrees of transparency, and the screen really seems to burst into flames. (Dull flames, but...)
• Finally, why not switch from red/yellow to greys/blacks at the end of the sequence, for smoke? I think it looks great!

August 10, 2005

• Just improved the explosion a little. No time for anything else!

August 11, 2005

• Googled some, and add links to some information about the game on this website. Learned a little about the game play, thanks to some screenshots.

August 16, 2005

• The Silicon Valley Linux User Group had a "Hacking Society" gathering tonight, so I took Melissa's laptop to go work on the game some more.
• The laptop's CPU had decided to step itself down to only 200MHz, so the game was having trouble keeping up with the 30FPS I wanted it to run at.
• So, tonight's code fest was converting the main game loop to first erase most objects one at a time, and keep track of what parts of the screen changed. Drawing only the parts that changed is a lot faster (but much less simple to code) than simply erasing the entire screen and drawing everything, which is what I was doing.

October 18, 2005

• It had been a few months since I worked on this project, and another "Hacking Society" event was taking place today, so I stole Melissa's laptop (and her Wacom drawing tablet).
• I added a title screen, and attract sequence. It cycles through title, instructions and high score table. I based the layout more-or-less on some photos of the original game's attract screens.
• A title screen needs a title graphic, so I did my best to replicate the hand-drawn, coloring-marker marquee that the original prototype sports, using The Gimp and the Wacom tablet. I've never really drawn anything with that tablet before, and am not a good artist to begin with, but it came out acceptable.

  Original:
  

  My version:
  

• Since I now have a high score table, it decided it was time to create a data file to store high scores in. Perhaps if I add an "Options" screen, options can live in there (like sound on/off).