Game Progress Update #8

Update #8

Hello world, welcome to the eighth Dev with Dave Game Progress Update. This time I’ve added the pickup system which will enable the player to use the powerups.

Pickups

The pickups allow the use of powerups, like the shield, which are activated for a limited time after collecting a specific pickup.

Currently the pickup spawns 15 seconds after the last one is collected or drifts off the screen. This is not how it will be in the finished game, but it’s perfect for testing purposes 🙂

The vertical movement is currently a simple sin wave, which is controlled by an angle# variable which wraps round once it reaches 360°.

And, like the coins, collecting the pickup was a simple case of modifying the existing collision function.

The Store UI

I’ve spent quite a long time this week away from the keyboard planning the UI/UX of the store.

Unfortunately the store hasn’t made it into the game yet, but here are some artists impressions of what it will look like.

Below is the Main screen from the store. The title bar area at the top contains a back button to return to the main page, the current page title and the players available balance of coins.

The remaining eight buttons represent a different section of the store. I may consider putting the player stats and achievements here, as well as a profile button and perhaps even the settings.

The next image shows the upgrades section. The title bar remains unchanged, except for the page name. The panels below this represent the upgrades you can purchase.

Each panel contains an icon which represents the upgrade, the name of the upgrade, the price and coin icon, and 5 bars which light up to indicate the level of upgrade.

Once a powerup is fully upgraded, the price disappears as no more purchases are available.

Next time

I hope that I’ll have the store UI in place in the game, even if not fully functional. I still have a lot of graphics to design and create to do this though.

See you next time 🙂

Game Progress Update #7

Update #7

Hello world, welcome to the seventh Dev with Dave Game Progress Update. I’m happy to say that I have at least managed to get the button handling system working this time round, even if there is only one button so far!

Buttons

The button handling system is a simple set of functions which can add a button to a UI page in a single command, check for button presses every frame, and also handle the response to each button press.

The system uses variables to track whether the mouse has been pressed, is being held down, or has been released. This will allow the buttons to animate eventually.

The button properties are all stored in an array the same as the other two UI element types I’ve created.

Problems I’ve faced

The biggest issue I have had whilst creating the button handling system, was the fact that the scanlines overlay was interfering with the button sprite detection. Any checks were simply returning the overlay sprite ID instead of the button below it which was the intended target.

I fixed this by simply moving the sprite offscreen which I check for button presses, then move it back before the screen updates. It’s not an elegant fix, but It will do for now.

The second problem is that I have found it very difficult to make recognisable icons using the low resolution that the game is based on.

In the next update

Over the next two weeks I’m going to spend some time creating graphics for the various UI screens, so hopefully lots more buttons and stuff for you to see (even if it’s not entirely working by the time the next update is here)

I also need to add a system to allow pickups to the gameplay, to allow the player to use powerups. Although I doubt this will make it in until the update after the next one.

See you next time 🙂

Game Progress Update #6

Update #6

Hello world, welcome to the sixth Dev with Dave Game Progress Update. This time round I have a whole new zone to show off, as well as having fixed a couple of niggling issues with restarting the game and some work on the UI handling system with the buttons.

Asteroid Zone

The first addition in this update is the new Asteroid Zone (Section 3.3.4. in the GDD). I’m currently using an asteroid asset which I found on Open Game Art, I like the style, but it’s not using the correct colour palette.

Because of the Zone systems I’ve already set up, spawning the asteroids was fairly straight forward. I did however have to make a small modification to the UpdateZones() function. It now checks to see if the current sprite is an asteroid or not, and if it is it adds a y velocity to the movement as well.

I expanded on the zone description a little on the Trello as well, which I need to update on the GDD, but that will probably wait till Monday now.

Game Restart

The changes here are mostly just bug fixes. The particles now no longer remain on screen when the game restarts, most (if not all) game related variables now reset when you restart the game.

The last thing I changed here was adding a function to remove any of the existing zone sprites ready for a new game.

UI Handling System

The one thing currently missing from the UI Handling System is buttons. I’ve added some variables and some empty functions ready for this, and created some place holder graphics which you can see below.

I had a real issue trying to create the settings icon in such a low resolution and sticking to the design principles.

In the next update

Next time I hope to have the buttons working, and have made a start on creating some of the other UI screens.

See you again in two weeks 🙂