Week 18 - The dramas

Welcome back to another.... erm... well... I want to say "productive" week, but I don't think this one should classified as "productive". At most, maybe a "two steps forward, three steps back" week? Well, anyway. welcome back! What a frustrating week it has been. Let me start off by saying, I did do a lot of work, but inevitably scrapped it... Why? Well, Firstly, I started off by redesigning the background to become more of a "finger-obstructive-free" display. However, after a few variations of it, I decided to go back to the original design and just use a smaller joystick. Below is the various attempts.

The first attempt I made I used a very small joystick. The problem was that I was squishing it too much to the corner which made it very awkward to move around with. It was at the point where I started to accidentally close my game because i pressed the back button on my phone rather than the joystick. So then I moved to attempt two: A slightly larger joystick, and a large foreground image which covered a bit more of the arena. This attempt it felt like the arena was a lot smaller and harder to work with. It didn't feel very good, and felt that the game play was affected too much by the UI design. Then, finally I compromised and reduced the size of the display back down to where it was initially, but made the joystick slightly bigger. This to me felt easier to control and felt more comfortable. I would probably still play around with this during Alpha/Beta testing, but I think I'll leave it as is.

Then, after going around that enormous time-wasting circle, I finally moved on to finalizing the trap algorithm. The algorithm I initially created didn't really work as well as I thought, but it did help organize the traps, and helped me get a better grasp on the timing involved with each trap phase.

I basically organised the traps as below:
Phase 01 (0 - 5 seconds):
Easy random traps (roller, fire wall, and buzzsaw) every 1 second

Phase 02 (6 - 11 seconds):
Easy random traps (roller, fire wall, and buzzsaw) every 1 second
Easy Algorithmic traps (roller, fire wall, and buzzsaw) every 3 seconds

Phase 03 (12 - 20 seconds):
Easy + Medium random traps (intro to spikes, slime and bomb) every .8 seconds
Easy Algorithmic traps (roller, fire wall, and buzzsaw) every 3 seconds

Phase 04 (21 - 30 seconds):
Easy + Medium + Hard Random traps (intro to electricity and puncher) every .6 seconds
Easy + Medium Algorithmic traps (spikes, slime, bomb, roller, fire wall, and buzzsaw) every 2.5 seconds

Phase 05 (31 - 45 seconds):
All random traps every .4 seconds
All Algorithmic traps every 2 seconds

Phase 06 (final phase) (46+ seconds):
All random traps every .4 seconds
All Algorithmic traps every 1.5 seconds

Now, I would have some footage, but, I started playing around with the Z-Layering system again, and somewhat broke it.... Yeah, so no footage this week sadly. "Now why would you do a thing like that"? Good question, let me explain...

So last week, or a few weeks back (these weeks are starting to blend together), I mentioned that I wasn't happy with the layering of the traps on the ground such as the buzzsaw, and the traps on the walls (such as the flames, and electricity), so I implemented a new Z-layering system, which of course has broken. I essentially wanted all the ground traps to be a separate z-layering to the wall traps so they wouldn't clash, but of course, I've gone and made a boo-boo. Don't worry, I'll hopefully have this sorted before next week and have fresh new video footage of the awesomeness.

Besides that, that's all I have really done this week. Since going back to work, and working on house-projects, there wasn't really much time for me to work on the game. Hopefully I will have a lot more to show you all next week!

Until then,

​Thanks for reading!