Well, the planet game is finished (Planet Plan). The only reason I did that game was to show an example of expanding on a very basic idea. I tried to take one of the easiest ideas and turn it into something more interesting. I feel like I painted myself into a corner a bit by doing so. It's not the greatest, but I tried to keep some kind of simularity to it's original roots…(In this case, the "Click on the balls demo") The way things were going in the begining I wanted to do a game more like Mad Planets from the early 80's. I think it would have been much more fun that way… but that would defeate the purpose of doing the game in the first place as an example.

On to the next project I really want to do more… the puck bowler. I was waiting for images from my brother that would hopefully be used in the game directly… but the table is so long and it would require overhead shots to stand a chance (in which case I am sure you will get glare off the playfield.) After taking tons of pictures the only ones that seemed usable are more like the normal angled view. Besides…to even try for an overhead shot of the table all the way down you would encounter a problem once you reach the pins. He also tried a wide angle lense to get more of the table in the shots but that lead to another problem…the edges get distored and are not totally stright. Here are a couple of pictures from his table (of many) that I will have to work with…

<a href="http://imageshack.us"><img src="http://img238.imageshack.us/img238/2711/puckbowler2wg2.jpg" border="0" alt="Image Hosted by ImageShack.us" /></a>

<a href="http://imageshack.us"><img src="http://img170.imageshack.us/img170/6760/puckbowler3il2.jpg" border="0" alt="Image Hosted by ImageShack.us" /></a>

So it looks like I will have to try and fake it by redrawing the entire table by hand (only a few colors), but no real chance of using real images stiched together.

Another point of interest…. the pin layout… I still need to map out things more to find out what pin does what in every situation and setting (easy, medium, hard…first shot, second shot..) There is another way of posibily doing it… I was also sent a diagram of the pin-layout from another puck bowler… as he said "probably a United puck bowler rather than Chicago Coin. So, do I try to figure out all the pin interactions on this one, or do I mix a "known" pin layout with this playfield. There are not as many switches I believe, but they play basically the same way. I have played a few puck bowlers in my youth and they were pretty much the same for what they did. Only difference may be options like having Falsh-O-Matic scoring and such I would think. Time to start drawing by hand I guess…at least most of this would be "straight lines".