Progress
Hitting a group of daily milestones seems to be working out well. Getting at least 10-12 things done feels like a good pace, though I think some things might simply take more time in the future like using all the elements I have to make a newer, bigger level and not just the demo I have now.
I started by updating a few images and sounds; the Crusher has a noise when you collide with it distinct from others, the player makes a sound when hurt, the Crusher now looks like it's dangerous on all sides with a forcefield look, and I changed up the laser dish to be more inline with the rest of the structure. Originally I was trying to go with that Death Star concave laser lense feel but it didn't look good even as a place holder. This one I think has directionality to it and it should be more obvious what it is. Maybe I should have it fire a big laser every now and then, but that might just not get seen or noticed. The Door Keys also get a new look, more plainly circular and easily color coded. I can color up the door sprites as well to reflect to the player which ones they should be after in order to progress.
I finally prodded the UI a little bit more and while I'm still confused by it all, I did manage to replicate up a heart system and make the hearts little batteries. I have red ones for health right now, and blue ones for the power bar later. I don't think there needs to be a lot more UI now aside from that; maybe a mute button? I currently have that just bound to M.
I also crushed a few bugs that started to show as I messed with more things. I realized that the doors weren't deploying a proper opening sprite until I could give it the right instantiate command. Supplying a transform directly resulted the newly created door being a parent to the old door, which got destroyed, destroying itself; not to mention the coordinates where it got deployed where all out of whack. I also found out that while deploying the UI that I could now go past 0 hp with a large enough boost from the crusher; this was because of an overflow at the UI level that when it sent an error stopped proceedings in the rest of the method that called it.
Critical to the actual game itself, I set up a slow time power for the player. It technically only slows enemy turrets and the crusher but the modification required was pretty light; really just altering the deltaTime variable for when they do their update activities. Effectively, I can now make turrets and crushers more dangerous and rely on the player to decide when they need the assistance. We can also go ahead and call this ludonarrative consonance; the player can only slow the cycle of the machine mechanically, and can only slow down the narrative cycle of violence itself. Always helpful, but never enough.
Checklist
I think there's more things I want to do that are conceptual and interesting additions, but there's plenty still I need to do that's still critical. Our checklist now is
- Create a UI element for the players current power charge
- Create a soundeffect for the players power when it starts/stops/is ongoing
- Create a Main Menu for the game
- Create a Cutscene to deploy some narrative
- Change levels as the player completes them
- Get some fanfare for success
- Better Music, Better Background that's not just a wallpaper, Better Sprites
- Brand new levels 2 and 3.
- Possibly redo player breaking to be more icey.
- Create a mobile enemy ship