Platforming Without Keys

So I've been writing up the game design document for BIT - the game I penned previously for a project for class, but am now hoping to actually work on with the other students in my class to make an iPhone and PC release - and some fairly interesting issues have cropped up.

You see, BIT is a platformer. Now, this might not really sound like a problem but when you look at how the iPhone and iPod Touch work - there are no buttons. No arrow keys to bind controls to. No d-pad. Just a touch screen and an accelerometer. It has really cool tools to create games - but they don't exactly lend themselves well to 2D platformers.

So I had to come up with a solution. I went through several different ideas (using the accelerometer to control the character by tilting and flicking the console as you move, keeping a finger on the touch pad to guide the character around) but both ideas didn't lend themselves well to the kind of style of gameplay in BIT.

I got my hands on a friends iPod Touch and played around with a few games and got the answers I needed at least, and a few ideas. So I started writing out mechanics, sketching out some interfaces and came up with a boring (but effective!) answer.

When you don't have buttons to press, you make buttons to press.



With this in mind I decided to think about the way the game plays less like using buttons and more like using a mouse to press buttons. How would you make a platformer in that case? And so I penned an idea that the character is constantly moving - the moment you press a button to go forward or backwards, he immediately starts moving. Leaving you free to jump at your leisure.

Now the only way to make sure this will work is (obviously) to make a prototype. But I doubt we'll stray far from this sort of mechanic.


Subscribe to Diomades by Email