Hi everyone,
For the jam submission of Freedom Forest I made some poor UI choices based on time constraints and lack of testing on people that weren't me so I thought I'd just pop a couple of tips in the forum here for anyone planning to give it a go.
- Make sure the animal you want to photograph is in the center of the screen, not down the bottom where the camera is. It's an aesthetic choice to make the camera look like you are carrying it low, it will raise when you take a scoring photo.
- The camera has a range to prevent people taking photos of things they shouldn't be able to see. I think I set this range a bit too short, mostly due to animals in trees. If you are having issues with getting misses that don't make sense, perhaps try getting a bit closer.
- The camera will only scroll up and take a photo if you are aiming at an animal on your endangered species checklist (bottom left of screen). If you attempt to take a photo of an animal which is NOT endangered you will register a "miss" and the camera will flash but not move.
- Attempting to photograph the same animal twice will also result in a "miss". Miss is poorly named sorry and ran out of time to improve that or add some kind of tag to the animal to show it was already photographed.
- The minimum score to 'win' is 15. The star ratings are 15 = 1 star, 30 = 2 star, 50 = 3 star.
Think of the camera on the HUD as purely aesthetic. It's like a gun in a regular FPS, it's there for looks and you actually want to aim in the center of the screen.
Obviously it's too late to fix this for the jam submission but there will be some updates out soon to rectify these issues for anyone interested.
Good luck to everyone!
