Work for Alpha

Joy, Alis, and I met yesterday and made some decisions about moving forward. Team, please note that our next meeting is Tuesday at 3pm on the 10TH FLOOR DT LAB. Ideally, we want our next round of work (prototype, art, sounds) done by then, but if that's not possible, please try to have them done by end of the day on Tuesday. That will give us time to review everything and make some changes before Thursday morning. Also, it's very important that you post work to the blog rather than send emails around (upload the actual work or post a link to the work wherever you decide to store it). As we move foward we want to use the blog as a tool for collaboration. This is especially important because our schedules are making it hard to meet.

Mechanics
I'm going to spend another day trying to fix basic bugs, but if I can't figure it out, I'm going to have to move forward with getting the new features in. If it comes to that, Austin and/or Kyle could be used as technical resource to troubleshoot those bugs.

• new row falls faster as time expires (because the user will rarely look to the right of the gameboard, we want to simplify the penality axis to just time - the new rows will be a visual cue on the gameboard that time is running out - also, this means we're getting rid of the idea of a an energy bar)
• penalty for mismatch after 3 consecutive mismatches - a time penalty - so rows will fall faster as described above
• star will be only bonus on the actual game board
• other bonuses will be earned by stringing combos together of 3 or more - these will go into a bank on the right for later use when the player desires
• time bonus - using this bonus will add time as a means to counteract the time penalty described above
• row bonus - will clear the bottom row of items - in a way like the time bonus if adding a new row is a indicator of time expiring, but this is more immediate in that it happens right away
• show all bonus (rainbow) - show all cards, like before, but now it is in the bank and moved off the screen
• each level will have a mission goal (i.e., clear 6 blues or match 2 combos in a row), but i may keep the goals the same as it was working last week for now

Instructions

• I will work on implementing this screen since I will have a better idea of what will actually be working for Thursday
• The instruction screen should be designed for Thursday and incoporated the overall look and feel of the aesthetic that the design team decides on for this week. Just use placeholder text in your mockup.

Art
Joy, Alis, and I like the idea of putting funny, goofy, non-sequitur characters (e.g., dancing hot-dog guy, grandpa sleeping, etc) behind the closet doors to engage the user. If the design team doesn't like that idea, you should move forward with another idea that is to your liking. Note, creating animations for characters/items behind the doors is possible, but it may weigh down the flash player. It is also important to consider that the more a user plays the game, the less likely s/he is going to pay attention to things like animations if the focus is on memory.

• Develop one consistent look and feel for items behind the closets
• Apply the look and feel to other screens (finalize resolution - the prototype can be changed to fit new dimensions)
  
• splash screen
• instruction screen
• game screen (2 mockups - one with a door opening during normal play and one with a show all to show more of the times/characters)
  
• level start/complete overlay (on top of game screen)
• game over (overlay or new screen)
• high score screen

Sounds
A list of sounds is coming. Please upload or link the sounds here on the blog by Tuesday. Sounds should be in mp3 format. I strongly recommend keeping wav versions for future use.