UI & Polish

This week was all about tidying up the game, fixing some bugs, and adding more UI.

Main Menu / Settings 

The main menu was looking a little bland and empty. The menu music does feel a little Christmassy so I decided to add some more Ampi’s around the area that flash between colours, like Christmas lights! 

The main menu

I also added these to the settings menu, and to the new “Thanks for playing” screen (more on that later).

Pause Menu

Sometimes life gets in the way, and you just need to pause a game. With that in mind I added a pause menu to the game. I just wanted it to have the basic functionality of a pause but given that this is only a prototype game I added a button in there to skip the level. That should speed up testing if there are any major choke points! 

The pause menu

Objectives

Just running to the end of the level doesn’t provide much of a challenge. So I’ve gated the end of each level. I had a few options of how to restrict the speed running here, like adding keys to the game, or a button that needs to be pushed. In the end I decided to go with number of bacteria killed. This is the most fitting objective that I could come up with that would fit the theme of the game, because most people’s bodies don’t have buttons or keys in them…

The UI at top of the screen

Stats Screen / Thanks For Playing

It felt a bit jarring going from finishing the last level to being thrust into the main menu again. I’ve added a “level complete” after each level, as well as thrown in a “Thanks For Playing” menu on completing the whole demo. One option for this screen would be to have screen shots of the game, or potential future levels. Another option is to put in stats so the player can see what they achieved! I added in a way of tracking the playtime of each level, as well as the total number of kills and total number of lives (doses) used. And of course this screen needed some flashing Ampi’s. 

The stats screen at the end of the game.  

Animations

Killing enemies was looking a bit drab. On a successful attack, they would just disappear. Pretty boring stuff. I decided to fix this by animating their corpses! They now slowly turn white, and shoot off into the distance.

Fly...

Floating around in acid and slowly dying also looked a bit boring. So, I’ve added a horrifying drowning and burning to death animation for the player to watch while they panic. It might raise the age rating of the game, so I’ll have to keep that in mind for review.

What a way to die.

Player Feedback

No feedback again this week, I guess people don't want to play </3

Bug Fixes & Minor Additions

-Further corrected jitter on camera movement
-Started adding sound effects, so far just a player hurt sound.
-Fixed collisions between food and everything
-Fixed music bugs when switching scenes
-Fixed acid overlapping
-Tidied up some animations
-Many, many more…