carlfoxmarten | Progress!

Today I showed my mentor my current progress on my Android game, and was quite encouraged by his response.

He is a proponent of the "release early, release often" methodology, as that acts as a bit of free advertising for developers and their software, and prepares the public for the upcoming complete release.

I was kind of surprised just how short the list of things he thought I should do before releasing the game was: Some additional feedback for failing to make a match, sound effects (to help with the feedback), and something to make the game fun.

The tricky part is the last one, but it could be as simple as a cool animation for the blocks getting removed.
Another option is for the score to be tracked in a global highscores list, which unfortunately needs a server on the internet to keep track of such things.

I'd like to add a cool animation for blocks removed after a match is made, but I'm not quite sure what to do.
Another game I've played breaks each block removed into four pieces and throws them around in a nice shower of pieces, while a version of Tetris I wrote a few years ago (and never released) has each block spin and shrink.

After I get this version of the Dig Site game up to proper speed, I'll need to get a credit card.
In this case, a disposable one will not work, as Google needs a full credit card so they can pay you.

I also just spent several hours adding what should have been an easy feature: Animating the line when it slides back after failing to make a match.
I suspect the reason it took so long was due to the number of mistakes I made previously in the development, such as using flags when I should have used state variables.

Anyway, development continues.
Plus, you can tell when you've reached an interesting point in the development of an application when you pass up playing games to work on the program...