Devlog 3 - 11/05/24

Development of Scunthorpe Specials has continued this week, and has been the most productive week so far by far. I started off by making a pumpkin game object that would fly out of any random corner of the screen towards you every 15 seconds, dealing half your health in damage if you got hit. I sourced the sprite here:

https://www.remove.bg/upload. An audio clip plays when the pumpkin spawns to warn you that it is coming. I also created a death screen that displays if you are killed by the pumpkin. I made this by getting an image of a pumpkin and an image of a pub and overlaying the pumpkin. Pumpkin: 

https://www.hiclipart.com/free-transparent-background-png-clipart-isuzb. Pub: 

https://www.zomato.com/kolkata/best-bars-and-pubs. I had issues with the pumpkin sticking out of the image on itch.io though, but I used a canvas component to fix this. I created the UI with the same techniques used in earlier 109 tutorials, and found the font in the asset store for free.

After the pumpkin mechanic had been developed, I moved on to fixing how the shooting mechanics worked. I made so the 8 ball was lethal to any enemy object it hit, using the right click to shoot, and made the other balls disappear after being in the game for 5 seconds, using left click to shoot. I also added a particle effect to the 8 ball in order to keep track of it after firing, as I kept losing it during testing. I made a sound effect for any time one of the balls hit something which is simply a vocal sample from myself. I also created an array of samples that randomly play when picking up the 8 ball. I also added a looping song to the gameplay scene which is made by Carter's band. Valentine by Bonsai: https://open.spotify.com/track/4CjFNFdELDE9GvMR46O5z2.

After this, I added an enemy sprite sheet, made through overlaying a picture of the purple drink from the game's backstory onto an 8 way movement sprite sheet I found. Drink: 

https://www.narconon.org/drug-abuse/purple-drank-effects.html. Sprite sheet: 

https://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?threads/8-directional-8-frame-movement-preview.103304/. I made so a collision with one of these enemies would take 10% of your health. Killing one of these enemies plays one of an array of sounds as well, much like picking up the 8 ball. I then added a screen for death upon one of these collisions similar to the pumpkin one but with a picture of a horse overlaid instead. Horse:  

https://breeds.okstate.edu/horses/. 

After this I added a health bar to keep track of player health and a timer that counts down from 5 minutes. When the timer gets to 3 minutes another enemy spawner switches on and the timer turns yellow, then another at 1 minute along with the timer turning red. The three spawners spawn enemies every 10, 7 and 5 seconds respectively. I might change this though as the first 2 minutes of gameplay are too easy. The spawners can be seen as represented by red circles in the gameplay screenshots.

After this, I began working on the main menu, which consists of a video of my housemate Carter (the main character) eating some eggs on toast with some effects implemented. I found it very difficult to make the video work for a WebGL, as I didn't realise it wouldn't play like it did in the editor. I spent many hours watching tutorials and making builds in order to test the video until I finally worked it out. This was the most time consuming and confusing issue I encountered, but I think the sweat was worth it. I also found a free song online from here: 

https://uppbeat.io/music/mood/goofy, and used Audacity to add voice lines to it from myself; this plays on repeat along with the video. 

https://cxm.co.uk/saving-the-great-british-pub-through-cx/. The Who is Carter scene has a picture of the real life Carter overlaid as well.

Lastly, I added a Scunthorpe Special that has a 3% chance to spawn every second behind the bar. Upon walking into this, another recorded vocal sample plays and 20% of your health is regained. I found the image for the Scunthorpe Special here: https://www.weekendnotes.com/british-chip-shop-curry-sauce-recipe/.

The feedback I received on the game at this point was that there is a glitch where the pumpkin can knock you through the wall. The suggested fix for this was to change the pumpkin to a trigger rather than a collider. There was also feedback about fixing the enemy spawners so that they can't spawn on the exact location you are, or at least cannot hurt you upon doing so. The final piece of constructive feedback was that the first 2 minutes of gameplay seemed slow, which I would agree with. These issues will be the first tackled when I continue development. The remaining feedback was positive, mainly commenting on the how the 8 ball shooting and picking up mechanics seemed to work well.