State of the Game, 10/8/2020
In case you missed it, this is today's summary! "Covers game improvements, goals, point structure, art update, and prize money!" So everyone is curious about the prize money so I will start there: First to respond to this gets $1,000,000 in game money*! *In game money does not ex
In case you missed it, this is today's summary!
"Covers game improvements, goals, point structure, art update, and prize money!"
So everyone is curious about the prize money so I will start there:
First to respond to this gets $1,000,000 in game money*!
*In game money does not exist and will not be implemented, so I guess you can feel good about life instead?* ;P
Anywho, lets get to the meat of the subject!
What is left to complete?
In short, the answer is very little! The only main thing to do is make a tutorial. Aside from that, there is just a little bit of art that may get redone, I have yet to decide, and then just optimize and bug fix! After that, I will be making a new trailer which showcases the much better looking game, because it has a 1000% increase in visual quality now. Once that is made, I will freshen the store page accordingly. While I have made a point to make the game optimized as I go, I just realized I made a really dumb mistake which bogs down less powerful computers. If you are interested, read the next paragraph, or, if you are uninteresting, skip it to move on ;)
Of the many modifiers in the game, one of my favorites is the "darkroom" modifier, which makes most of the level black. The way this works for this game (and most other arcade games that do this), is the level is drawn to a surface, then a new surface is made that is entirely black, then you subtract the lights from the black surface, revealing the level underneath. Then, you have to merge the surfaces, and that becomes one frame of the game. The problem is, a large amount of lag is generated on computers with less powerful processors, because two reasons:
1) The higher the lava is on the screen, the more black needs erased, and when you think about it, there is no need to have draw the black or erase it if we know the lava is there.
2) The game constantly tries to run at 60 fps. That is a lot of unneeded calculations we could be putting toward performance.
Anyways, this is a rather easy fix (in theory), but I thought it could be interesting to some people to know what goes into making this project happen.
Improvements since last announcement
Everything.
Good talk. xD
In all seriousness, compare these two screenshots, this will reveal many visual enhancements I have painstakingly made.
See the differences?! I am pretty happy about the way it looks now.
Keep in mind the game still has a set size, so there is still a letterbox effect, I just got a more precise screenshot for the new one, that is why those aren't on that one.
Some things you cannot see in screenshots are the new effects- dripping water and, more importantly, an animation as you mine stone! These are subtle changes which GREATLY improve the game's flavor and feel.
So that kind of covers visual enhancements. There are many others I just don't have the time to point out. Lets move on!
The new scoring system
So I have totally revamped the scoring system for the game. You may have noticed in the screenshots there is a "bonus" system now. (The bonus system was mentioned in the last announcement, but is now fully implemented). You get a score and a bonus throughout completing a level, and at the end of each level your score is multiplied against the bonus, to (sometimes) massively increase your score! Here is how points are now calculated in the game (this will be included in the tutorial).
Points:
Kill blob: 100 * type
Grab coin: 100
Dig gold: 100
Drop blob out of level: 1/2 normal points
Bonuses:
Shimmering*: 0.01 * type
Lava Flame: 0.01 * number of blobs killed by this flame
Gather a coin using a blob: 0.01
Drop a blob on a blob: (x + x^2)/40, where x is the number of blobs killed by the falling one
*Dropping shimmering blob out of level gives no bonus
Blob types are as follows:
Green, 1
Light blue, 2
Red, 3
Yellow, 4
Light purple, 6
Dark purple, 7
And yes, I know there is no type 5. There is a reason for that, but that is a rather lengthy rabbit hold I'd rather not go down.
As you can see, dropping blobs on other blobs is the best way to get a high bonus, but this did make a problem- with the level "A Study in Technicality 2", there are 93 enemies on that level, which could reward you with a potential maximum bonus of 219.55! THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE. It would result in scoring over 4 million points when done correctly, and that drowns out all the points from all other levels combined, so sadly, I have to lock this particular level's maximum bonus to 1.
Bug fixes
These are innumerable. I have done so many of these my head hurts, but that is a part of making a game and releasing a quality product, so I shall continue making my head hurt! I laugh that I said there were only ten bugs in the last announcement. Oh how little did I know.
Goals
There is only one goal now, and that is to finish this project and submit the game to Steam by the 26th of this month, so it can be reviewed and I can get the green light for release.
I suppose there is a second goal: Don't lose my mind in the process!
Well, that rather sums up anything to be said at the moment. Back to polishing up and finishing...
Mine Trap Reborn!
~Thundermagnet