Everyone has a different idea of what alpha and beta mean in terms of development status. For me it goes something like this.

• Prototype: Just tinkering with an idea
  
• Alpha: Some but not all game features are developed.
  
• Beta: ALL known features are developed but they are not polished or bug free
  
• RC: Potential release candidate if no bugs are found.
  
• Release: think about it...
  
• You'll see me talking about Alpha 1, 2, ...n or beta 1, 2,...n. The numbers simply correspond to personal milestones and/or releases I make.

Diver is currently in the Alpha stage.  Here are the features as they currently stand.

Features with some amount of development:

• Game Engine
  • basics are in place development is ongoing
• World
  • gfx are just placeholder for now
• Diver
  • gfx complete
  • control complete
    tuning complete (with option to revisit)
• Diving Boards
  • gfx complete
  • DivingBoard and DivingBoardView objects complete
  • tuned minimally
• Landscape/Diving Platform
  • 1st iteration complete (works but will be revisited)
• End-Level Buoys
  • gfx complete
  • Buoy, BuoyView, and BuoyPair objects complete

Feature not started yet:

• Splash animation
• Start, End, Pause, Restart level
• Joint breakage/damage effects
• Sound effects
• Scoring
• Load/splash screen
• Level selector screen
• World/background
• Ancillary Items: Birds, fish, boats, hot air balloons???
• Other stuff...

Finally, here are some new screen shots of the current Alpha version of diver. (I included the browser in the first shot to give a better idea of the screen size) 

Diver is being developed for Microsoft's Silverlight platform.

What this means for those simply interested in PLAYING Diver:

• Playing Diver will be pretty much the same experience as playing a Flash game
  1. Go to the Diver web site
  2. Install a small Silverlight plug-in if you don't already have it. (Similar to the flash plug-in)
  3. Play!
• Unlike much of Microsoft's platforms, Silverlight is cross browser and cross platform.  It will be playable from IE, Firefox, and Safari on either Windows XP, Vista, or an Apple.  At some point in the future it will even be playable on Linux thanks to an open-source team of developers working on a Linux version of the Silverlight plug-in.

Some may cry foul about having to install a plug-in to play the game but rest assured Microsoft will be doing all it can to make the Silverlight plug-in as ubiquitous as the Flash plug-in. It will take some time, but I have no doubt they will get close to that kind of install base.

What this means for those interested in knowing the details:

• As mentioned above, Silverlight can be considered Microsoft's version of Flash/Flex.
• Silverlight 2.0 will be built on a subset of  Microsoft's .Net platform.
• Diver will be built using C# and Visual Studio 2008
• The beta of Silverlight 2.0 should be released sometime early this year.  At which point I'll release my first playable version of Diver.

Some may wonder why I chose Silverlight for Diver.  Why not Flash?  Well it's pretty simple. I've been a Microsoft developer for 9+ years now and I've used .Net since it was in alpha.  I like it, I know it, and I'm productive with it.  Flash (and Flex), on the other hand, I'm not familiar with. At least not from a developer stand-point. While I'm sure I could pick it up and learn it if I wanted to, I feel my time is better spent using tools and tech that I already know.

Plus, I see a good future for Silverlight and thought I'd get in on the ground floor!

Next week, I'll get back to talking more specifics about the game. I think I'll talk some about the physical scale of the Diver world.  And I'll have some new, better quality video previews.

-Jeff Weber

In my last post, I briefly mentioned Diver and provided some screenshots from a prototype.  Time to go into a bit more detail.

For clarity I should point out Diver is the name of the game as well as the name of the main character.

Diver is a game of skill.  The point of the game is to cliff dive from some start point, across various spring-boards and other obstacles, to some end point where you attempt to make a perfect Divers entry into the water.

The two primary goals are:

1. Get to the end point.  I'm currently thinking this will be marked by two floating balls/buoys attached to the sea-floor by rope.
2. Enter the water like a real diver would and get a good dive score.

While I think this game idea is somewhat unique as described, what really makes it different is it's game control mechanic.

If you ever played Ski Stunt Simulator, then you are familiar with the controls of Diver.  This game control mechanic, in my opinion is very under utilized. I have yet to find another game besides Ski Stunt that uses it to full affect.

Diver is controlled 100% by mouse movement and physics.  The position of the mouse on the screen maps directly to the Divers shoulder, elbow, hip, and knee joint angles.  By simply moving the mouse you can make Diver crouch, bend back, bend forward, reach hand over head, and leap into a back flip. 

It's hard to do it justice with words, so here is a video from my prototype to hopefully make things more clear.  (The screen capture software funked up the colors a bit but you should still get an idea of the game play)

-Jeff Weber