Final Project Progress

So I have the basic ecosystem that works within the snowglobe (as discussed last class with Paolo):

The girl starts outs in an “empty” snowglobe with no other objects besides the landscape.  The “goal” of the game is to navigate the ecosystem and build her a house before she freezes.  The basic mechanics are shaking the snowglobe to create a temporary “springtime”, picking up and dropping objects, planting seeds, and cutting trees.  Shaking the globe to create the springtime will allow the player to find objects hidden under the snow such as seeds and sticks and rocks.  The player has to balance building and maintaining a fire, planting and cutting down trees and building the house.

To further the snowglobe theme, I’ve decided to do away with the shelf room and have you simply double click on the game icon (which I will replace with the image of my snowglobe as I have bought the full license) to view into the snowglobe.  This double clicking corresponds to shaking the snowglobe, so that each time you want to shake it you have to close the game and open it again.  In this way, the snowglobe will sit on your desktop to look at whenever you want the same way a snowglobe would sit on your shelf.  Eventually, once you have reached one of the two endings (building the house or the girl freezing), you will not be able to move the character when you open the game, you simply get to observe (like a real snowglobe).  If you have built the house, the girl will appear and maybe wave while it is “springtime” and go back inside when the snow falls again.  If you have left the girl freeze, you have essentially created a statue that never moves. To reset the game, you’d have to get rid of it and redownload it.

Lastly, I will still have the mechanic of zooming in further for a closer look at the girl.  This will allow you to see how cold she is (the bluer her skin is the colder) and give you hints of what to do next in her thought bubbles.

So far I have been working to implement some of the new mechanics and have begun to work on the new artwork my final version requires.  I have implemented the pick-up mechanic using a little blue ball as a test.  You can try it out here: http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/elazrus/Games/SnowGlobe/ (the one that says pick_up_test).  To pick up or drop an object use enter.