This isn’t an actual screenshot to showcase any sort of playable game-dev progress for my w-i-p telcihc flash platformer―which, to be honest, has been on the back burner for some time now, even though it does feature my ol’ dr. julius “oC” telcihc as the protagonist/player character, so to speak.  Rather, it’s a mock-up for how a telcihc game might  look as a static image with touch controls and the whole works.

The process of creating this image has made for quite a fun UI design exercise for me.  Yet, perhaps a bit ironically, i’m still rather skeptical about how well a platforming game can work with touch-controls, like in terms of how well can a platformer control , given the advantages and disadvantages of touch-screen interface.  I’m convinced that something like a shmup can be made to work quite well with touch-input, as the 2o13 Android port of the legendary Ikaruga  showed with its smooth & surprisingly tight navigational controls, even if the virtual action buttons (i.e. the important “change” and “shot” buttons) felt a bit less responsive than desired during the heat of battle in bullet-hell mayhem―largely due to touch-interfaces’ inherent lack of the tactile subtlety that one can feel with physical buttons. Meanwhile, i’ve yet to find a “traditional” platformer―as in a non-endless-runner-type platformer―where the basic act of moving around  feels good while played with touch-controls.  Granted, i haven’t really experienced that many platformer on mobile devices to date, but…oh well~

…And i digress.  So…back to the topic of the featured image:  oddly, this blog-post has been somewhat difficult for me to realize, despite my having initially completed this “screenshot” mock-up some months back.  The ill consequences of perfectionism, perhaps.  The very first of the “UI screenshot,” completed in feb 2o14 and shown below, featured my then-newly created UI design mapped over an older work of mine; since then, i’ve replaced the initial telcihc “Prime” version of the player character (shown below) with my current, sackiCon-like “βeta13” version of telcihc (the one with the blue eyes and pincer-type hands in the large, main image above), and also added some small environmental details to the background.

So after a good bit more poking and prodding, it’s finally posted and free on the interwebz for the world to see and (hopefully) respond to.  Feel free to leave some feedback if you like what you see.  In the meanwhile, at least that’s something for me to check-off me list.  Yay me.  ha~       >[:)