12
Dec
Designing Warships
Category: Commercial Work, Gaming, Icon Design, Interface Design, iPhone, News, Software Releases
Warships, a game designed by me and developed by the Canadian Edovia is now available on the App Store. It’s a great, simple game of naval conflict, and I had a lot of fun designing it. You should get it (while it’s still a mere $1!) here.
However, I won’t be doing a lengthy post on its design process this time around. Instead, I made a video in which I tell you a bit about the process and show off some timelapses of the game graphics and icon. Consider this an experiment, and let me know what you think!
Viewing in HD at Vimeo is recommended!
I just bought warships! Time to take a gander…
Really cool video :)
Awesome; Really nice to get a look into how this awesome game was designed.
Very nice video. I think it would have ben great without the voice too, kinda like that Convert UI evolution video. What was most interesting was the evolution of UI elements. Would have loved to see more of the initial sketches. Warships looks like a really twist of battleship. I’m downloading it now :) Keep up the kick ass work!
I actually prefer videos to lengthy posts, as it allows you to show more of the design process. For example, showing every PS shot along the way takes up a bit of bandwidth whereas you can show them in quick succession in a video.
Nice work and I look forward to purchasing this once I get an iPhone/iPod Touch.
This video was a very clever idea, I love it! I wish more people were doing more stuff like this.
Nice work Sebastiaan. Very cool to see the icon iterations as well.
Do you automate grabbing screenshots or do them manually as you work?
Coming from this site, its meant to be a huge hit. Already downloading it.
Michael: I left milestone PSDs so I could timelapse them later. Some of them were flattened though, so I couldn’t show them on black.
Spot on Sebastiaan, spot on.
Nice design process…
To bad the video is only in Flash, yesterday I saw the post on my iPod Touch and wasn’t able to see it. It really surprised me, since you made a blog post about ClickToFlash and declared that you hated Flash with a passion.
Just bought Warships! Sweet app!
Mario: I do. Vimeo is iPod / iPhone compatible, though! I can’t deliver HD video without Vimeo, as it’d cost me too much in bandwidth. A necessary evil, for now.
Excellent work Seb! It’s nice to see some of the background designs that went into the game. Not played it myself but I’m sure it’s fantastic.
Could do with talking to you again sometime actually, it would be nice to have a catch up.
Good luck with the game, it looks great! No doubt your established audience will help you generate sales, which is a problem I’ve had with the iPhone game I designed, Asteroid Rage – http://www.asteroidrage.com
Yeah you are right it does work on the iPod Touch by watching it on Vimeo, it just wasn’t obvious.
My bad.
Nice stuff Seb, as always! I learned some details I wasn’t even aware of! :) Response so far is super good and people seems to like our game!
@Derek Mack
Nice game, I’ll try it out! Marketing is hard and requires lots of time and effort to generate some buzz.
I really like Warships, but if I have some feedback, it’s that the sound design could do with a little more flair: I’d love to see s big boom of a cannon when a shot is fired, and a big deep splash and spray when a shot misses and lands in the water.
When a shot hits a ship, I want a boat rocking explosion and some creaking of metal, and some Titanic-like creaking and flooding when the boat finally sinks.
Oh, and the “under attack!” red light kinda looks a bit like a button that you’re supposed to press, which confused me.
Otherwise, Warships is really fun and I’m enjoying it. Great work!
I really like the idea of a video on your blog. The video itself reminds me a bit about Jonathan Ive talking about the design process of Apple products in “Objectified”. I would love to see some longer videos about the design process and the choices you have made. They may seem logical for yourself now, but they aren’t always to me.
This was really fascinating. I’d love to see more iPhone app developers share their creative process.
One thing I’m especially fascinated in after seeing this video: Is there much of a technical challenge to transition a Photoshop mockup to the SDK? Or is it simply a matter of importing images like the web? Forgive me if I’m oversimplifying anything, I’m completely unfamiliar with that side of the hall.
Very nice video. I love seeing behind-the-scenes of iPhone app development.
P.S. I just got my “Settings” shirt, I love it!
Really nice graphics and an all time classic game = great product. It is definitely worth a buck. May I suggest more options and the possibility at the end of the game to have the opportunity to look at the adversary battleships positions – at the end there’s no rewarding message rather a ver short one and immediately you are brought back to the “would you like to twitter your score” (frankly who twitters this kind of stuff??? – I understand it is marketing but the product sells by itself).
Downloaded the free app from app store. Great game but the ad at the bottom blocks all the bottom squares making it immpossible to continue playing the game if any of your opponents ships reside there.