Project Aqua Dash.

It's a sunny morning here in Finland and I would like to talk about my project that I have been working on for an year now. The progress has been slow, but now it seems that it's becoming a full game. And don't worry, you don't need to read this blog. Just close the browser if you want. Anyways, I would want to start by some history of the project.

I started this game as a joke, when I wanted to make my cousins laugh or even be suprised. They were playing a lot of Supaplex and I just liked the game so much, I decided to make a fan-game of it. I know, not the best idea to start a project, but atleast I made my own graphics, eh? Had a lot of trouble making the graphics though, but when I got the player down, it was an easy road. The aqua(blue) color scheme just started to fit in the game.

The first version was buggy, had kind of stypid graphics and there was an explosion sound that annoyed a couple of people. There was no menu, just a couple of levels to test the engine which I made for this. It worked, but not as good as it should have. There was no bombs, no tile eating with mind, the rocks were falling stypidly in the same place and you died suddenly without a warning. I think I have the first version somewhere..

I left the project to do something else, because my nerves were destroyed of the bug finding. I still remember that feeling, when you found a bug, fixed it and it still didn't fix but made a new bug that's harder to fix. Then I decided to do the engine again, from ground up. I made it better, with less bugs, better looking graphics, fitting background and better gameplay. I was impressed myself when I asked for comments on the GMC and from my friends. They liked it and wanted more levels. That gave me inspiration and I really started to work on it. I even downloaded Supaplex and played a couple of levels, to get ideas on how to improve the game. The thing I noticed that the level design was superb, I couldn't do such hard and yet cool designs for levels. They still aren't super hard, but they are getting harder as I learn. As the project grew on, I made a menu with my Photoshop skills. (pic from current version) The A.I was the fun part, the enemys always turn left when they can. If they can't they just try to go into the next direction from left. ( That made no sense. ) Anyway, it was hard to make with my GML skills back then and this project gave me my current skills with GML. I think the A.I works nice now, eventhough they still do walk over eachother. That shouldn't happen.

I started to work on this project again when the summer vacation began. I had a boring day and because my hard-drive crashed ( check the previous blog ), so I accidently played Aqua Dash again. It was fun and I was suprised how fun it was. I kept on playing and playing and got into the last level I made previously. Wanted more levels and started making them.

Now, I'm on making level 30, so that means I'm in the half way of making them. I just hope that they are difficult for the players when I release the next beta, or even the full game. For me, the levels are hard, but I made them, so the levels should be extra hard for you.

I still have to make levels with the one-way-only arrows, the tiles where you can only walk on a specific direction. They are already made in the game, but just not in the levels. Hmm.. The game should get a lot more harder with the arrows. I hope not too hard..

You must be bored, so I'm just going to end this blog here. Thanks for reading, or even just looking at the pictures. I'm going to get back on making the levels and hoping that the 60 levels will be ready soon. Wish me good luck!

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