week 36 - Level up revised!

Welcome back to another Juicy Developer Blog! So, last week I mentioned that I would showcase the players levelling system (which depended on whether or not I could actually fix the issues I was having). Luckily enough, I did manage to fix what I needed to fix! Woop woop! So without further adieu, I present to you, the new player levelling system! 
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As you can see, there's been quite an overhaul. The first thing that I removed was the banner which exclaimed the players medals that they unlocked. I figured it wasn't too important for the player at this point, so I decided to remove it from the leveling section, and only have it when everything was done and dusted  (at the end with the game over screen). Honestly, I thought having medals was a really cool idea, and I still think that, but I haven't really used these for anything as of yet which i feel could be touched upon... Maybe in a few updates after the game is released... We'll see.

The second thing is that the leveling system now uses an "experience bar" rather than relying purely on the completion of missions, which, before, wasn't really conveyed well. Doing this gives the player more of a chance to unlock new and exciting things faster and fairer. This also explicitly shows how far away the player is to reaching the next level, and gives more a sense of completion compared to before.

Another thing I changed was the missions impact on the player level. Yes, when the game is over, the player receives points towards their next level equal to their score they received, but the missions also give an even greater amount of experience when completed, giving incentive for the player to complete these missions. On top of that, I changed their little icon from a tick box to an actual Star, which I feel is more thematic.

On top of this, I added a new fancy 'chest' effect which explodes with goodies when the player unlocks the next level. 'Hopefully' this will give even more of a sense of urgency to obtain the next level to open that juicy, juicy reward.

Speaking of chests and rewards, I had also revamped the entire reward system to include ways in which to unlock new skills, characters, and power-ups. The older rewards system was still fairly similar to the new one, but was harder to complete since it had that 'mission' wall. At this point, I'm pretty happy with how it's functioning. Just thinking about it makes me want to add more and more!

With all of this said and done though, I feel that this system is a little more clearer and easier to understand than before. Not only that, but hopefully this will be more exciting to gain these levels and obtain these rewards for the player.

Next week I'm hoping to complete the different player displays as well as a new character design! I'll also be looking into revamping the patterns of the traps as well so that the player can experience all the traps relatively quickly. Trying to come up with a new algorithms though for this is going to be pretty tricky, but we will see how we go!  

Until next week, 
Thanks for reading!