It’s been kinda slow making Unicorn Shoppe lately, I’ve been “busy” playing Batman Arkham Asylum (amazing game by the way) and work.

I did however manage to work on buttons a little bit. I added the extra space require for them not to overlap with the background of the game and I added some functionality, so they actually do something.

Originally I wanted the buttons to be pictures. There’d be one for just a regular button and then another picture for the pressed version. So when you’d click the button the game would just swap out the base button and switch it for the pressed button. And when you’d let go it would switch back to the default button.

I like this idea at first because I thought it would yield nicer looking buttons and “animation” but today I realized that I wanted to have disabled buttons. I could have easily requested a third button from my artist, or hell, I could just opened up Photoshop and add in a transparent grey layer over the base button.

But, I decided to just use Java’s drawing capabilities. This one I don’t need any other images and I can change the colours very easily, or even randomize them on startup or something.

Things left to Do:

1. Get timers working during game and when game is closed.
2. Replace placeholder items
3. Get a background for the button layer of the game
4. Tutorial/First time launch mode

I was hoping to post a little more frequently with smaller updates but I have this project spread out through three computers. So the images I do save tend to lose relevance as soon as a switch computers.

Anyways, I’ve got a template button in place now. You can’t see it in the image but when you click on a button it changes colours; in the final version it’ll hopefully just look like it’s being pressed.

Since I’m making a throttling game (or a game that forces you to pace yourself) it’s pretty crucial that I have some kinda of saving system so I started working on that. It’s almost finished actually, I just need to “hook” everything together.