Some insights to Roll the Ball 2

RTB2 concept Art

Roll the Ball is a little android game I made with friends as a school project.

Version 2 of the game will be using Unity (3?), so we can concentrate on the game itself instead of the engine. A first testworld is already in development to evaluate what can be done, without loosing much performance.

But before starting I made some concept art, that will help to get the right look and feel for the levels:

Testlevel

Fireflies

more coming soon...

Performance

When we started RTB1 we designed it to be running best on a Samsung Galaxy S1. It runs with ~40fps and the phones native resolution. The current generation of phones (like S2 and S3) has no problem running it at 60 fps, but the resolution is quite low, especially on tablets.
One thing I learned from this: hardware power develops much faster than you think. Since this project will take about one year to be finished (maybe more), RTB2 will be developed for current super phones. With Android gaming consoles on the horizon, and chips like tegra4 available soon, this will hopefully be the right decision (we can always tweak down some settings).
Making lifelike animations and characters on a smartphone is hard enough, but having moving lights, detailed textures and other effects (don't forget sound-design) drives the frame rate down to the lower end very fast.

Character design

Those firefly monsters communicate with light, since it is very dark where they live. They don't speak or make noises, so they don't attract enemies. Their lights will react to different situations: fear, curiosity, attack or idle.

Level design

There will be light. Having lights and (faked) shadows [unity indie version :( ] will make a great atmosphere.

Evolving sound patterns will provide a great feeling of progress and error. 

Like RTB1, there will be different World designs, driven by a story.