Frog Maker

2011-06-27

Remar here, ready to tell you about the joys of Nintendo 3DS development! Today Gustav found that the largest factor in our loading times was the loading screen itself, and our new QA guy has recovered from motion sickness after playing our game. Apparently a medical history of motion sickness and stereoscopic 3D don't mix... In the graphical department, Anton and I discussed the best way to set a rotating chainsaw on fire. We can't have clusters of them flying through the air with the fire coming out the wrong end - that would just be embarrasing. For some reason there's also been an increase of frogs in our concept art and games lately. During lunchtime and after work, Anton, Mattias and I play assorted fighting games and argue over the superiority of MK9, SSBM, GG:AC, and MvC3, not to mention arcade sticks vs gamepads. It's the nerdiest time of day, and I think the more "serious" companies in the corridor wonder if we ever work at all. Every time they walk by our room, I happen to be staring at the screen or stretching my arms (such as right now), which probably doesn't help. Anyway, developing for the 3DS means a fine balance between interesting use of graphics and plain gimmicks, and in some cases opinions differ. We don't really "think in 3D" considering that both of our games are 2D, gameplay-wise, so we rather use it as an extra feature. Same with the stylus, it's just another way to navigate the menues. I may be oldschool, but I think buttons often work best. [caption id="attachment_1335" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Why did we include an Xperia Play in a 3DS post?"][/caption] That's it for my introduction - next time I'd like to go more in-depth with one of our games. "Designer" is a fuzzy job title, so I might also just talk about what I do here at Ludosity, and what you can expect if you want to work at a small game studio.