Designing Backgrounds

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While I was working on coding the gameplay and figuring out exactly what we needed for the User Interface, Jeff (our artist) started working on the backgrounds for all the different levels in the game.  I had brainstormed a lot of great locations and gave Jeff the list.  He started off by sketching out the [...]


Finalizing the User Interface for Dog Solitaire

From my sketch, Jeff turned around a pretty great initial HUD mockup: I had a problem with some of Jeff’s color choices for the bone bar and we went through a few iterations of the Undo button.  Ultimately the items in the corner got a lot more space as well. I liked the consistent leather [...]


Discussing User Interface

As Jeff worked on the dogs and cards, I started working with him to think about the Player interface and the level backgrounds as well.  I took a current screenshot at the time (Feb 2010) and marked it up with elements that we needed for the player. Ultimately, we worked on the backgrounds first and [...]


The First 5 Dog Cards

I had some pencil sketches and some really ugly early gameplay screenshots, so I knew that the first task was to work towards a final screenshot and get all the gameplay stuff done.  I settled on including 40 dogs in this game and told Jeff to get started on some of the 26 I had [...]


Finding an Artist

I went to conceptart.org to find an artist to help me with this project.  It’s hard to find someone to work with, so I decided that I would pay a few artists to work on some concept sketches of their vision of the game.  I ultimately settled on Jeff Yoon since his responses were prompt [...]


From Mobile to Dog Solitaire

Best in Show solitaire had humble beginnings… when I got my new Blackberry Storm 2, I started messing with it and trying to get games working on it.  I started with a simple solitaire game that worked great on my PC, but lagged and had slowdown and control issues on my Blackberry.  So I forgot [...]


Best in Show Solitaire Announcement

So long time blog readers may remember some tests I was doing for a solitaire game on mobile devices.  I never really got the game working how I wanted on my Blackberry, but the game has continued to evolve.  Progress has been so good in fact that it will likely be our next full game [...]


Astral Hunters: Flash – It’s free and on the way

We’ve decided to expedite getting some form of our game playable and into people’s hands, so Zak and I recently decided to port the core mechanics of our game and make a quick, hi-score based version of the game.  The game screen is actually sized so that it could be used as the banner on [...]


Mass Effect 2 – Finished

Ok, so maybe Mass Effect 2 has taken away some of my focus.  The good news is that I beat it yesterday. All in all, it has an interesting story while eliminating a lot of the tediousness of the original.  I still think the load times are far too long, but ultimately I liked it.  It’s [...]


Astral Hunters Website is Up!

Our Astral Hunters Website is up.  Click on the image above to check it out (if you haven’t already noticed and clicked the banner on our homepage).  The website doesn’t feature much yet, but it will continue to be updated with pictures and information in the following months.  The bulk of the site content is [...]

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