Game Progress Update #4

Update #4

Hello and welcome to the fourth Dev with Dave Game Progress Update. This update sees a little bit of refinement in the graphics, as well as the introduction of a couple of new systems.

UI Framework

First, I’ve started fleshing out a UI Manager script to help make setting up and updating the UI elements of the game a little easier. Although this is currently only behind the scenes stuff at the minute.

I’ve created a typed array to store data for all three element types (Text, Image and Button) which I’ll be using for the UI, as well as an array to manage which elements are shown on each page.

Coins

The next new addition is coins! The player can now collect coins when they appear on screen. They are spawned by the existing zone handling system, and the only changes I made were adding a couple of variables to the player type to store the total coins collected, as well as the coins collected from the current game, and adding a quick check in the collision handling function to see if the sprite hit is collectable or not.

Graphics

The eagle eyed among you will have noticed that the game looks a lot more like the concept pictures now. I’ve spent a good few hours using paint.net to create some graphics which are a little closer to what I intend the game to look like, rather than those awful placeholders it was using previously.

I’ve also added the scanlines and CRT overlays for the authentic retro look.

In the next update

The next job will be to replace the current Game over screen, and create a pre-game UI screen with a play button as well. I think it would be a good idea to add a UI card or two to the Trello to help keep track of progress.

I’ll also be doing more graphics work, creating sprites for the forthcoming zones, and perhaps adding further tweaks to the existing stuff.

See you next fortnight.