Game Progress Update #65

Hello World! And welcome to the sixty fifth Dev with Dave Game Progress Update! This means that I have been writing this blog about Flappy-vaders for around two and a half years now. It’s gone from being just a sketch or two on a page, to being almost ready for release.

The last few weeks have again mostly been spent creating footage for the promotional video I am making. This has mostly been done inside on the desktop because neither my tablet nor laptop are as fast at processing video.

Let me tell you all about whats been going on.

Creating the video

Carrying on from where I left off in Progress Update 64, I had finished the Mega-zone. This was a specially created zone which contained all the elements of the game. I say finished, I mean that I thought it was ok, I am too much of a perfectionist to ever be 100% happy with my work. Anyway, I set about recording some footage..

Attempt one

I started off by warming my self up by flying the level without recording it. I flew majestically and did the zone perfectly, not once, but twice.

Next, I opened OBS Studio to record the footage, pressed record, and promptly forgot how to fly!

It took another two dozen attempts at least before I finally managed to record a successful run through the mega-zone.

I also recorded a few seconds of just the ship flying along an empty level as well.

It was when I was putting it together in HitFilm that I noticed a problem. In order to add text to the video, I needed to have the text under the scanlines overlay. This meant re-recording all the existing footage without the overlays *sigh*.

Attempt two

I hadn’t even opened any video software things started going wrong. First, I opened the notes relating to the work I had done so far. I noticed that only the last paragraph had been saved. So, instead of carrying on with the video, I had to try and remember what I had put down previously.

It turned out that removing the scanlines wasn’t a simple case of just commenting out a line or two. Because of the way Flappy-vaders handles user-input, the overlay is repositioned onscreen in several places in the code.

It also seems the Munro font doesn’t work inside HitFilm, so instead I am going to have to make all the text as images in paint.net and then add them to the video.

It took about an hour to determine the fontsize required, the spacing, and to create the first round of cards.

However the next day, I decided I didn’t like them and decided to change the wording.

I also spent some time sketching out time lines and calculating the speed needed for each section of the footage to be recorded, so the acceleration stays constant to match the music. I did this with pen and paper, which was a welcome change from the PC.

Also I decided it would be easier for this if I commented out the game over screen for now, so I can get the explosions recorded without UI over the top of them.

Attempt three

When I started recording the next lot of videos I discovered one lone solitary text left on screen. I could remove this in post production, but it would be better (re Easier) to remove it programmatically and re-record the footage.

It took quite a long time to find the cause of this text, and I think I may have missed a line off the One Note log while I was doing it. This will not doubt come and bite me in the arse at a later date.

However, once I have found the cause and fixed it, I was ready to record the next lot of video clips.

Unfortunately, after the first three or four videos, I apparently got mixed up with the footage recorded from the game. Since I hadn’t mentioned the speed in the file names or in , I couldn’t tell which ones were which. (Remember, each clip is progressively faster than the previous one).

When it came to the third clip onwards, I am remedied this by adding a debug read out to the display when the main menu is in place. This way it shows up in the bit I usually clip off and discard during editing.

Edits to the game code

I’ve made quite a few changes to the game code to make the video footage which I have been making. To make it easier to undo these changes, I have used two methods to remind me where changes have been made.

Firstly, I have been keeping a log of the changes in OneNote, but a word document or even notepad would do.

Secondly, each change also has a key word in the comment, so when I want to undo them all I can simply use the search facility to hunt them all down. I’m using the word PoopShtein, because I’m not likely to use it else where, and at heart I am still 14 years old! 😅

Finishing touches.

The last things I needed to do were to add the overlays for the CRT border and the scanlines.

I had to export a few times at different settings until I got the scanlines opacity coirrect. The first few clips were far too dark.

I also created a fifth card to display over the logo at the end of the video. This card displays a “Coming soon” message.

First Reactions

I did quickly post the work done so far for a few people to see. The feedback was mixed, some people loved it, others didn’t seem so keen. Still all feedback is gratefully received.

In the next revision, I am going to revisit the wording. I think it better to have just one line of text per card, even if it means reducing the length and having more cards.

I also noticed (after I’d uploaded it to YouTube), that all of the pickups have somehow ended up on the editing room floor, and not one made it to the finished video.

As well as including at least one pickup in the first six seconds, I would like the treasure card to be changed to something like “Collect coins and buy upgrades”

And that’s all for now.

That’s all I have time for this week. I will be back in a fortnight with the next progress report. Until then, I hope you all have a good couple of weeks.

See you soon.

Game Progress Update #64

Hello world, and welcome to the 64th Dev with Dave Game Progress Update!

There wasn’t an update last fortnight as I was having some time away from the keyboard for my Birthday! My girlfriend got us tickets for the Sanctuary Reunion Event and Unit 9, which was amazing! I had the best time with the best people. 😊

However, I forget to mention about it in Update #63. I am old, and it slipped my mind! lol!

This time round I have mostly been working on the promotional video, although it does feel like one of those weeks where I was constantly interrupted and that I could have got more done without them.

Let me tell you about what I have managed to do.

Promotional Video

To recap, I am editing the game to create exactly the video footage I need for the promotional trailer. Before I can start creating what I have started calling the Megazone, I need to get the following tasks done.

• Set the speed to match the music I have already recorded.
• Change the random zone selection so it picks a specific value each time.
• Remove all UI elements and debug text
• Disable the acceleration
• Record all changes (explain the PoopShtein and find all method)

Set the speed

Actually had problems as I had forgotten the music and game speed were independent, and I had in fact just made a note of the music speed, not the target player speed.

Then, once I had realised, I then had to play the game until I could get the music speed to the right value, and see what the player speed was at that time.

Then it was a simple case of finding where both values are set, and changing the initial value.

Disabling the acceleration

This was quite simple, to do. I found the line where the player speed was increased, and commented it out.

I also had to disable the code which increased the music speed. This again was simply commented out once I had located it.

Remove the UI

One of the things recommended for game play footage was the removal of the UI, so as not to distract the viewer.

This was a simple case of commenting out every element on the game ui page.

Stopping random zone selection

As with the above bit, this one was another dead easy one to do. When I was generating the zones originally and needed to test them, I had already implemented a system to allow me to prevent random selection and instead let me manually select which zone is to be used.

Logging changes

Since all of the changes required for creating the footage to use in the promotional video are temporary and will need to be removed once the video is finished, I decided the best thing to do was to log all the changes I made.

As an extra precaution, in the comments of each change, I have left the code-word “PoopShtein”. This may seem random, but it allows me to use the Find All feature to find any reference of the code word in any of the source files in the project.

Creating the Megazone

The megazone is the name I have given to the special zone I am creating to showcase the game in the very hectic first six seconds of the trailer.

The aim is for it to demonstrate most, if not all the aspects of the game in one crazy busy zone.

I’ve finally decided (although this may change) to have the first half to be filled with meteors and anti aircraft guns; and the second, with pipes, coins and missiles.

One of the issues with testing this once I had created it is that the game is set to run very very fast for this, making it insanely difficult to play.

Progress so far

As I said above, I’ve not made as much progress on this as I would have liked. Below is a video showing what I have achieved so far this time round.

It’s only rough, but it gives an indication of what I am aiming for.

Thats all for now

I’m quite late with this update. It’s nearly 10pm now and I still have to do the social media posts for this update yet. So I will leave it there, and I’ll be back in two weeks (I promise, no sneaking off and having another birthday! lol)

Until next time..

Game Progress Update #63

Hello World! And welcome to the 63rd Dev with Dave Game Progress Update.

It’s not the longest update I’m afraid this time round. I was hoping to get another couple of bugs fixed as well, but time got away from me.

The weather hasn’t helped. I am the exact opposite of solar powered, and the weather here in the UK has once again been amazing. Blue skies and sunshine however means a very lazy Dave.

Most of the work I did get done this time round was relating to the promotional video I am planning to make.

Promotional Video

The goal is to make a 30 second video to use to promote Flappy vaders on social media and on paid adverts. I’d already written a basic plan for it last update on paper.

I am just about happy with the plan for the video, but I am a little less happy that I have the skills to pull it off, but I will try, lol.

While I was planning the video, I did spend a while watching some more videos on how best to make game trailers and promotional videos in general.

I found >this< post to be quite an interesting read about transitions. Not only does it talk in depth about the types of transitions and where they work best, it also had a lot of example movie trailers which demonstrated exactly what the guy was talking about.

Promo video sound track

I started with the musical sound track. As I explained in the previous progress update, the first 6 seconds or so of the video will be quite extreme, full on game play. So the music will start off at around 1.5 times normal speed. Then after the initial 6 seconds have passed, then it slows down to its normal speed. And begins to slowly speed up as the next 18 seconds goes by until it reaches once again the speed it was initially.

I decided the easiest way to get the exact speeds and timings in the music was to code it specifically, so i added a few lines of code to the beginning of the game to do this and allow me to capture it using as video OBS Studio.

Promo video action sequences

Since it was such a success for the sound track I decided I was also going to use a similar method with the gameplay footage as well, rather than leaving up to luck and/or skill! lol.

I am going to disable the automatic acceleration of the game and instead set it manually in code before each recording session.

Also I am going to make an specific zone with all the elements I need in it for the first six seconds of the trailer. I will also be specifying the zones manually.

These game play sections will be recorded without the UI being seen. So I will need to hide those beforehand. I also do not need these videos to have music, only sound effects. So I will need to turn off the music volume in the settings before hand as well.

Unfortunately I didn’t get the special zones for the video finished in time. So I can’t show you any progress on this as yet. I am hoping that I will have at least a rough draft of it done for next time.

That’s all for now.

As always, I will be back in a fortnight with another update. In the mean time, don’t forget to follow Dev with Dave on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to stay up to date with the project.

https://www.facebook.com/devwithdave

https://www.instagram.com/devwithdave

https://www.twitter.com/devwithdave

Game Progress Update #62

Hello World! Welcome to the sixty second Dev with Dave game progress update!

The glorious weather has continued. I’m currently sat outside in the garden with my laptop writing this blog post and enjoying the breeze.

This week has mostly been fixing bugs again (and finding new bugs, which was a little disheartening, but more on those later). But I did also manage to get some gameplay recorded hopefully to use for the promotional videos.

Anyway, let me tell you what I’ve got done.

Bug Fixes

In this update I have selected to get the following cards resolved🤞

• Player sometimes passes below floor
• Ship “flaps” when pausing/resuming
• Shield sprite doesn’t disappear at game over

Although the first one was started in the previous update because it took much longer to sort out than expected.

Player sometimes passes below floor

The first card I dealt with this time round was the Player sometimes passes below floor issue which I had previously started in the previous Progress Update.

While investigating the issue, I managed to find a new bug! Lol! The text for the self destruct unlock/upgrade does not change properly. As far as I can see all the other lines of text work properly. But I will test them all, just to be safe. I have added this as a new card on the Trello board.

Actually, I think I found three or four new bugs, but since they all related to the same issues relating to the second chance powerup, I didn’t give them new cards each. Instead I just noted them all in the existing card comments.

However, I did fix the passing through the floor issue. I found there was a conditional which was checking for sprite collisions and passing below a set floor position on the screen.

I duplicated the code and changed it so each conditional only checked for one thing.

I’m actually finding more bugs the more I work on this. It’s quite disheartening tbh 🙁

I noticed that the self destruct powerup was only working once per session. The most likely cause of this was a variable which was not being reset at the end of game (which it pretty much was, but more convuluted)

I tracked it down the the property which monitored the “phase” of the self destruct. It has three possible states, 0 = intialise, 1 = occurring, 2 = finished.

Infinite score bug

In an earlier attempt at solving this problem, I commented out a section which I thought was unused is it was where the phase value was reset to zero, but it turned out it wasn’t, resulting in this slightly chucklesome problem…

What was happening is that it would all run perfectly until the end, when due to some badly designed code, it would reset the phase value to 0, then increase it by 1 (d’oh!) resulting it in not initialising next time round.

Since it all more or less worked otherwise, I simply added a line to the game over section of code which this jumped to afterwards, to reset the phase variable to zero again.

I think this is all working now 🤞

Ship “flaps” when pausing/resuming

The next card on the list was the Ship “flaps” when pausing/resuming one.

The ship reacts to the press of the pause button in the same way as the rest of the screen presses. It propels the ship upwards slightly.

I fixed this issue by isolating the sprite ID of the pause button in game and then only activating a “jump” if the button is NOT pressed.

This was fairly straight forward to accomplish. I used the GetSpriteHitTest() command to see if the specific sprite was being hit at the specific coordinates, and it works as expected.

Shield sprite doesn’t disappear at game over

The Shield sprite doesn’t disapear at game over card was a simple one to fix. I found out where in the code the player sprite was hidden at the end of the game, and then added a line of code to hide the shield sprite as well.

If only every problem were this easy to solve.

Upgrade Store issue

This next card proved tricky to replicate. It was the one I discovered earlier with the self destruct text not updating properly. I checked the code and found nothing too obvious which would be causing only the self destruct powerup to behave like this.

Trailer/Promotional video

I also managed to make a start on a plan for the promotional video. Due to time constraints I am just making one 30 second video which will be used for all intial promo/advertising.

I will be using the graph below taken from Game Makers Toolkit, to create the video.

The plan is to have a few seconds of exciting full speed game play at first, before slowing right down and gently introducing key aspects of the game play. As each feature is introduced, the music and temp of the game begin climbing back up to a similar level as the Cold open section.

The climax section will finish by revealing the name of the game and a call to action.

Thats all for now

And that is all I have time for now. I’m going to be back in a fortnight as always. Where I may hopefully have even got all the known issue cards done and dusted, who knows, lol.

Anyway, remember to follow Dev with Dave on social media!

See you next time 🙂

Game Progress Update #61

Hello world! And welcome to the sixty first Dev with Dave Game progress update!

Well, on the plus side, the weather has been absolutely smashing. Glorious sunshine and blue skies with little fluffy clouds 🙂 I’ve spent more than a few afternoons sat under the gazebo outside with the laptop.

Things the universe has thrown at me which have prevented me coding this update have included breaking down because my car needed a new battery. This cost me a couple of hours of time waiting for the AA to come get me, and a lot more money than I expected getting a replacement battery.

As always though I have managed to get a few hours in working on Flappy-vaders and continuing on from the last Progress Update with the bug fixes.

Bugs fixes

I have pulled three cards to fix over the next two weeks from the Trello. they are..

1. Ship “flaps” when pausing/resuming
2. Player sometimes passes through the floor
3. Delay with Logo

Delay with logo

The first card I looked at on the Trello was the Delay with Logo card. This card was about the sizable gap at the beginning of the game before the UI and Logo appeared. I decided the easiest was was to simply create a large black sprite to cover the screen, then fade that to transparent once the screen is ready behind it. Still, I should probably create a loading splash for the game at some point, but for now this has made it look a lot slicker.

I remembered to use Timer Based Movement for the fade to ensure that it takes the same amount of time regardless of the speed of the device it’s running on. Slower devices just have larger steps in between the fades.

Player sometimes passes below floor

When I first tried to investigate the Player sometimes passes below floor card, I didn’t have enough coins in the game to purchase. I had encrypted the save game data so I couldn’t just edit the save game data.

I ended up adding a line to the start of the game which simply added 2500 coins to the players coin total so that could upgrade and purchase the powerup.

Once I had purchased and upgraded the powerup, I managed to test it 7 or 8 times without managing to replicate the bug. I will have to test this again when I have more time.

I have however managed to discover two new problems relating to the second chance power up when the ship crashes into the ground.

Firstly, the shield sprite is not hidden or removed from the screen when the player dies this way. And secondly, the player will burn through all the second chance power ups until there are none left and the player dies. I think that perhaps I should remove the crashing into the ground from the second chance. It would be better if the player simply died when crashing into the floor.

Sadly, This will have to be carried over to next update as I have run out of time for this update.

Ship “flaps” when pausing/resuming

Unfortunately I didn’t have any time to work on this card either, so It’ll remain in the In progress column for now until I get chance to look at it again.

I’m hoping I can resolve it by either using a flag to indicate that the game was paused so don’t flap this screen press. Or to just clear the jump pressed variable when the paused has finished.

Prepping for promotion

I also spent some AFK time thinking about how to promote the game. I have some great ideas for videos which I will perhaps start planning at some point soon as well.

Ideally I want a few high quality videos to demonstrate various aspects of the game to prospective players, in the three video aspect ratios that Google Ads ask for. As well as some stills from the videos to use as static images.

I will write a blog post detailing the planning and the creation of the trailers. Once I am a little further along.

Until Next Time

Thats all for now. I will be back in two weeks with another update where hopefully I’ll get some more of the obvious bugs fixed.

As always, stay tuned to the social media for news about the project.

See you all next time.

Game Progress Update #60

Hello World! Welcome to the sixtieth Dev with Dave Game progress Update.

I’m sorry the social media has been a little quiet this week, sadly my girlfriend once again ended up in hosptial for a few days thanks to her diabetes.

She’s back home now and is on the mend thankfully, but what with visiting her in hospital and trying to keep on top of everything else in her absence, I’ve had very little chance to work on the game.

That being said, I’ve been busy following on from Game Progress Update 59’s Bug fixing spree, and have managed to get through a couple of cards from the Known bugs/issues column on the trello. Here’s what I managed to get done.

Bug fixes

Powerup movement

The Powerup Movement card was the first one I had chance to look at. This card explained how I wasn’t happy that the sin wave used to determine the path of the pickup seemed to change as the game progressed.

I spent several hours first recording, then watching and comparing videos of gameplay

But no matter how fast I managed to get the game to play, the powerup path stayed the same. It only appears to change due to the game speeding up as it is played.

Missile Guidance Laser Transparency Issue

The next card on the list was the Missile Guidance Laser Transparency Issue. There were actually a few issues relating to the guidance laser system.

The lasers would occasionally show up in the wrong places, and with the incorrect transparency. Since it had been a long while since I wrote the system which controls this, the first thing I did was look over the code to refamiliarise myself with it. Fortunately I’d commented the code fairly well, and it wasn’t too hard to pick up.

It turned out that although the guidance laser sprites were hidden from view when they were finished with, their position was not being reset. I added a line of code to move the sprite offscreen when it was hidden.

This fixed all the issues with the lasers except one. Where a small unscaled laser would appear in the top left corner of the screen.

Another quick investigation of the code revealed that the the sprites were not repositioned at creation, so I added a line to move the sprites off screen when the guidance sprite was created.

This seemed to fix all the issues with the missiles and their guidance lasers. 🙂

Thats all for now

And that is all I have managed to get done this time round. I’m still hoping to get an updated build uploaded to the Play Store for the testers to get their hands on.

Hopefully I’ll be back in a fortnight with another update on the game.

See you next time 🙂

Game Progress Update #59

Hello world! And welcome to the fifty ninth Dev with Dave game progress update!

It’s been a very busy couple weeks, as I have had a website launch to be dealing with for my day job. This has eaten into my spare time quite drastically. Some days I didn’t even get to do my dailys in Fortnite! 🙁 lol

I thought I would be able to find an hour or two which would otherwise be wasted whilst shopping at the weekend. But as I was saying Monday, I took the tablet along to the shopping centre. But couldn’t find a coffee shop with a spare table.

I eventually remembered that the Willen Hospice charity shop had a cafe, so made my way over there. However, after I had got a tea and sat down, I discovered there was no wifi or signal on my phone. This meant I couldn’t work on the game.

I did manage to get some work done on the game in the shape of some bug fixes, and some graphical work. Let me tell you about what I have done.

Bug fixes

Start/End of game variable resetting

First I looked at the Start/End of game variable resetting problem. This was most noticeable when starting the second game. When the bug occurs, the player has to sit waiting for ages before the first obstacles appear.

The hardest part of this bug turned out to be tracking down what variable was causing the issue in the first place. lol.

It turned out that the currentZone.length# property was the cause of the delays. I did not reset the variable when the player died. So the value remained the previous zones length when a new game started. This caused the player to wait till the distance travelled was greater than the length before it would spawn a fresh zone.

This was a simple fix. I added a line to the “post end of game” section which basically reset the value of length# to zero.

Bullet remaining into new game

The next bug I fixed was a known bug, but I’d neglected to write it a card (or if I had I couldn’t see it). I’m talking about the Bullets remaining into new game issue. I remembered it while I was busy trying to fix the previous issue.

I wrote a function called DestroyAllBullets() which called the DestroyBullet() function for each bullet where the inUse flag was true.

Another easy fix. I will be careful this does not lull me into a false sense of security lol!

Game over screen problem

The Game over screen problem card was the next one I looked at. This listed two problems, one being that the zones are supposed to finish once a game is over; but that no longer happens (it used to, I’m 100% sure). The other was that the Game over screen text read “tap to continue” even though the game won’t actually let you tap until the speed has dropped.

I added a line or two of code into the game over screen code which simply checked if the speed was high enough to prevent moving on to the next bit, or if it was slow enough to continue. It then hides or shows the “tap to continue” text accordingly.

The other issue was caused by the isGameOver variable being incorrectly set. I had previously rejiggered the game loop to allow for the post game boosts like the self destruct. which had caused the previous code which set the isGameOver variable to be triggered too late.

I rearranged the previous code so that the isGameOver variable is set to false at the start of a new game, and to true at the end.

Not so much a bug..

I also did the Daily mission/Trophy fanfare card. Sometimes the fanfare got lost when the music was playing, so I decided to try and quieten it a little when the fanfare was playing.

The original plan was to have two sections of code which reduced the music in volume when the fanfare started, and then a second piece of code to return to normal when the fanfare finished.

I had issues trying to do this though. So instead I added a conditional in the UpdateMusic() function. This checks if the Fanfare is playing and sets the music volume accordingly.

Some new graphics as well

I even managed to find some time on Wednesday to create some icons for the coin packs on the store.

Like all the 2D assets for the game, I created the coin pack icons in Paint.net. It was hard to find balance between how many coins could fit in the space allowed. The space reserved for the icon is only 26 x 22 pixels.

It took me around two days to create, polish and finalise all the icons for the coins page on the store.

I did try and create a video to demonstrate all the new icons I had created for this page. But for some reason Hit Film was not playing ball particularly well. I will try and do the video again at some point when I have more time.

Thats all for now.

And that is about all I have managed to get done this time round. I doubt muchly I’ll get anything done to Flappy-vaders this weekend. It’s one of the Grand children’s birthdays tomorrow and I really need to tidy up my garden on Sunday. Weather permitting, lol.

I’ll be back on it next week though.

Game Progress Update #58

Hello world! And welcome to the fifty eighth Dev with Dave game Progress update!

It’s certainly been a couple of weeks for the weather. Every weather you can imagine has been thrown at us these last few days. We’ve had glorious warm sunshine, savage gale force winds, torrential rain, even hail! Often all in the same day!

I guess it’s the curse of the Easter weekend, with a bank holiday at either end.

I had a great time though, despite the weather. Over Easter, Me and my gf watched Monster Hunter on the TV, ate chocolate eggs, and a huge roast dinner as well.

I have managed to get some work done to the game though, I even had chance to sit outside and get some coding done in between the less pleasant weathery bits, lol.

IAP Ad Removal

I discovered that the new AGK IAP Commands suffered from the same delay/lag as the original ones did. So I am adding a small function from another app I wrote which resolves this.

This function simply checks the status of the IAP ad removal every five seconds for the first minute that the game is running. It’s a replacement for the original single check at the beginning of the code, which has since been removed.

	//	Kludge to fix the IAP issue...
	`	Only runs for 1 minute...
	If GetUnixTime() < startTime+60

		If iapTestTimer#+5.0 < system[0].sysTimer#
			
			iapTestTimer# = system[0].sysTimer#
			
			If GetInAppPurchaseAvailable(0) = true
				
				system[0].adsDisabled = true
				
				SetBannerAdVisible(false)
				
			Endif
			
		Endif
		
	Endif	

The above code is taken directly from the other App. But the basic functionality is what I need.

I may adapt this figure at a later date but I’ll see how well adding the function works. The goal is to not show after game ads ever to a player who has purchased ad removal.

Scratch card scratching action

Several people had suggested I shrank the scratcher sprite, to make the scratch card work more like a real card. But oddly enough shrinking the scratcher sprite has made it slower and less lifelike. Instead I have enlarged the size of the scratcher sprite.

GDPR Dialogue issues

I noticed that when testing the app on various devices that when the player is presented with the GDPR dialogue on first run, the player is sometimes thrown into the settings menu when exiting the page. This is not ideal or desired behaviour.

Testing revealed it to be an issue with the back button, the “no targetted ads” button, and the purchase ad removal button. The first two took the player to the settings when chosen. the Purchase ad removal button simply opened the IAP dialogue and did nothing else.

Fortunately the “Yes – targetted ads” button had all the necessary code in place, so it was a simple job of copying,pasting and tweaking the code to get the bugs fixed.

Music and sound default values

There was also an issue where the music and sound effects default to off when first run. This was another relatively quick bug to fix. I simply added a couple of lines to set the default values to 50 before creating the data file on the first run.

Quit button

The Quit button from the pause menu has also now been fixed. One of the testers reported that the quit button not only didn’t work, but trying to quit actually broke the game!

It turned out I hadn’t actually written the code for this. Now when the button is pressed it tells the game to jump into the “player death” bit, and go from there. There is no ship explosion though. Not sure if this is what I want yet. I’m still deciding how best to handle this.

Headstart Shield Placement

I also fixed the initial shield placement issue with the Head start boost. For the first frame it was displayed, it displayed at (0,0) rather than around the ship.

This was a simple fix involving setting the sprites initial position to the same as the players ships when the shield sprite was being spawned.

New test build

I am hoping to get a new test build with all these bug fixes compiled and uploaded today, as soon as I have finished this blog post and associated social media.

This will be the second test build to go out, despite what I said in the last blog post >here<, I didn’t manage to upload the new build in the end.

So if you are on the list of testers, check your inboxes this evening. You’ll (hopefully) have mail!

And thats all for now

That’s everything I have managed to do this update. I’ll be back once again in two weeks time with another update.

I’ll try and do a better job on the socials as well. I fear @DevWithDave has become fairly quiet of late, as all my time seems to be taken with other things.

Anyway, until next time friends 🙂