Hey there!

It’s been really long since I last wrote a post about the development of RAR III.

Short update on my life:

  • We finally did the Wedding Party this summer in Ankara with family and friends! I can literally say those were the best days of my life! 💖 (I’ll add some pictures at the bottom of this post 😊).
  • Other than that, I’ve been focusing a lot on my main job, which leaves me with very little mental energy for RAR development… but I still find the time for it (more on that below!).
  • Lately I’ve managed to compose some more songs. I wish I can record them properly and maybe upload them one day on Spotify or something. We’ll see! 🎵

In any case, if you are here reading this, it must be because you are interested in the progress on RAR III, so, without further ado, here comes the updates on its development… 🥁

RAR III News⌗

[Jetpack Compose] migration⌗

For most of you who don’t know what this is, Jetpack Compose is a “new” way of implementing the UI on Android, and it’s something I’ve been learning during the past year during my main job. I realised it made a lot of sense for me to re-write the screens I had already implemented on RAR III.

It’s been like a “making one step back but two ahead” thing to benefit from the ease of implementing UI, the speed at which I can modify them, reuse code, and even the easier way to add some animations.

Cool new stuff⌗

In the following subsections I will show some of the fanciest additions to the UI of the game, most of them thanks to the migration to Jetpack Compose 🤓

New bottom tabs organisation⌗

I re-organised access to screens like Inventory, Skills, or even the Collections grouping subsets under these main tabs to make access easier 🤓.

(By the way Collections will be accessible from In-Game together with Achievements instead of having to go back to the Main Menu! 💪).

Main Journey screen
Inventory, Equipment, Craft
Stats, Skills, Spells, Pets
Quests, Bounties, Map, World
Settings, Collections, Achievements
Fancy animation on the Splash Screen⌗

A few months ago, I used for the first time Fiverr, to find someone who could do some sort of animation for the Splash screen of RAR III, and I ended up collaborating with Ezza, a Professional Graphic Designer and Animator. You can see the result here:

Bringing @ to life!⌗

Although still not final, I tried to do something different with the Main Menu of RAR III to make it more dynamic and create some sense of wonder by showing the good ol’ @ character moving constantly from side to side, representing the adventurer traveling around the world in a minimalistic way.

Notice the line changing color representing the floor changes the color every time the “character” goes off screen. And you can touch it to make it “jump”. I thought it’d add a funny touch that would make someone smile when finding out about it 😄

You can see it here:

Improved progress bars animations⌗

So, I also had to redo the progress bars with this Jetpack Compose I commented earlier. Notice the subtle animation of the progress bar at sec 5 of the video. I’ve seen it in other games in the past and was able to implement it by literally just a few lines of code!

You can see it here:

What’s next?⌗

Well, these are just a taste of what I’ve been cooking with the whole migration and implementing the new UI of the game, I have a few other things in the bag I may explain in future posts 😜

I have to say I feel more confident than ever on how to implement the visuals of the game. The basics are almost covered, and I just need to start polishing some details (and add some pending features like sorting, filtering, etc.).

But what I have to really start working soon is the engine of the game itself. The proper generation of the islands, and their contents, the economy of the game, the stats and combat system, the crafting, the quests, etc.

I have a huge list of things to do. This migration and wanting to write this sixth post have been my top priority on the last few months. Now I have to start planning this next phase and set new milestones.

Can’t wait to start this new phase!

Afterword⌗

If you are one of the few people that has read so far, thanks a bunch for your patience and time, I appreciate it a lot! I am never sure how much these posts are valued by the players in our community, but even if it’s just a few of you, I’m already happy 💜

Thanks a lot for everything and see you in the next post (or on Reddit/Discord!) 👋

Well, I didn’t forget about it, here are some promised pictures from the wedding! 💍