Big things happening this week. After finishing adding in all the levels for world 2 I wanted to look at some ‘spit and polish’ for other aspects of the game.
First up was the level select area. I didn’t like the way the levels were being displayed. They would fade in and then cross fade when the left and right arrows were clicked. It felt and looked clunky. So, I rewrote the panels so that they now fade and move in to place (from lower down) and when the arrows are clicked the existing panels fade out and then the new ones fade and slide into place. It looks a lot better. I also changed the arrows to changes ‘pages’ of levels rather than just incrementing 1 – basically when the world is first displayed you will see levels 1-5 shown, clicking the right arrow used to change the display to show levels 2-6, then 3-7 and so on. This felt awkward so it now goes 1-5, 6-10, 11-15, etc.
Next up was the levels themselves. I had decided a while ago that I didn’t really want them all to look like the base is in a black void. I wanted to see about adding in a suitable background outside the base that is representative of each world. World 1 is on a space station so the background is a metallic tile effect. World 2 is a rocky world so the background is a brown rock texture. And finally to bring it all together and improve the visuals I gave the base an light source and dropped the ambient light of the game. This means that the base is fully lit (plus the previous shadows) but the area outside the base fades to darkness. It looks great and anchors everything more in reality.
Level 1.3Level 2.3
Other additions to the game include:
The objectives display at the start of the level now displays what components (reflectors) you will have available.
Fixed a bug where the normal reflectors code was being affected by the powered reflectors – that is, when the missile hit a normal reflector it would think it was powered and switch off – opps.
Fixed a bug where progressing from world 1 to 2 wasn’t working properly.
