This video literally changed how I look at game development. I strongly encourage you to watch it if you’re at all interested in making games.
These presenters explain the concept of “juiciness”. Juiciness incorporates things like eye candy, animation, sound effects, tweens, and is essential to make your game fun and engaging. I’m now looking for ways to incorporate “juiciness” into every game I make.
I’ve been making games using the Starling Framework, and I’ve been using a lot of tweens. Tweening is a great way to add what I call “juiciness” to a game (I borrowed that term from here). Tweening gives your user interface some animation, and if it’s not used too much, can really make your game more fun.
There’s a whole bunch of different motion types that can be used with tweens. This graphic helps when trying to picture the various tween transition types, or “easing” functions – not just in the Starling framework, but in any other platform.
Graphic originally from here.
A poem on priorities:
It’s easy to be busy.
It’s hard to slow down.
It’s easy to ignore
what’s most important for me now.
I could do what I don’t wanna do:
things that nag at me inside – but
it’s easy to be busy,
for in busyness, I hide.
It’s easy to be busy
and fill my life with fluff.
It’s easy! My schedule’s full
of tasks and goals and stuff.
And there’s no end to TV shows
and Movies I can choose.
And it’s easy, oh, so easy,
to distract myself with news.
It’s easy to be busy.
I cannot seem to stop.
I run from here to there
putting out fires til I drop.
And lying on my back I muse…
I HATE it when I fall.
It seems, sometimes, that busyness
is not so easy after all.
“I can do that.”
“I’ll make that happen.”
My time suitcase bursts it’s clasps.
I fill my calendar
with everyone who ever asks.
Yes, it’s easy to be busy,
and it’s hard to take it slow.
What’s NOT so easy is learning
to simply say, “No.”
Written by Jonathan William Litster. Used with permission.
