Thursday, September 23, 2010

Asteroid Belt Live Wallpaper v1.0

(Android Market Link)
(YouTube link)

Been working on this one on and off the last couple weeks, and finally have it to a point where I like it.  For a change not a lot of tech development happened with this one, it was mostly a matter of tackling the art and scene setup, and I'm happy with how all that turned out.

There's a few dozen asteroids in the foreground that tumble from one side of the screen to another, with the rest of the solar system in the background.  The orbits of the planets in the system are tied into time of day, with the slowest (the green gas giant) orbiting once every six hours.  The rest of them are at 3, 2, and 1 hour intervals.

The original scene didn't have the planetary orbits outlines, and it felt rather empty, and was hard to understand where the planets are were relative to each other (since they're all different sizes).  Adding the rings helped that a lot and means you get to see some shift when switching home screens.

The sun is a couple of layers of alpha, rotating at different speets, multitextured together, with a color gradiant overtop.  The result in a subtle but attractive animation, I think.

This is the first wallpaper that's really leaned heavily on OpenGL's lighting for effect, I think, and it didn't turn out badly.  I'm actually quite happy with the asteroids -- they're two passes, the first diffuse lighting and the second specular lighting.  They've got a good cold shiny look that feels very appropriate, I think.  They're also dark enough that they don't distract as a background.

All told I'm quite happy with how things shaped up.  It still needs a few more user options, I think, but I haven't worked out exactly what those should be yet... they'll happen in future updates.  Any thoughts as to what those should be, I'm all ears.

13 comments:

  1. Needs an option to adjust number of foreground asteroids, including none.

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  2. Fatih - Got it. I'll put that in next update.

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  3. I really like this except for the rings. To me it takes away from the scene. An option to turn this off and on would sell me on this wallpaper.

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  4. Jon - The option's there, you can now set the background system to "Everything", "No Rings", "Sun Only", or "Nothing."

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  5. I bought it...and have the reciept but it never downloaded to my phone? What now?

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  6. Joe - Please send a support e-mail to contact@kittehface.com and we'll get back to you.

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  7. I didn't buy this one after the looking at the trial version. It just seemed a bit dark and cold?

    The sun needs to be warmer and have more effects like solar flares?

    In terms of user interaction, maybe pressing the asteroids will break them up? After a while small pieces will disintegrate and bigger pieces will come along to replace them?

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  8. very dark but nice . Is it possible to make asteroids be not in the front of a screen but but them back to see planets in front?

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  9. This is a REALLY nice wallpaper!

    I have only one issue with it.. it keeps forgetting how many asteroids it should be showing. I had it set to quarter, which was nice and sparse, but after accessing the market and returning, the screen was full of asteroids. :s

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  10. I think it would be cool I if the asteroids had some interaction, like bounce or break off when they hit each other.

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  11. I bought the whole items to get the live wallpapaers but only have tw blue skies w/papers. I thought there was some menu to pick which one I want. Can't find that or any way to get to any preferences. HELP!!!

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