Adding JUICE

In this session, I focused on making the game feel good to play by adding sound effects, screen shake, and music, among other things.

Background music

I added five background music tracks, with one being for the ending cutscene, three alternating ones for normal gameplay, and a fifth for menu scenes.

Sound effects, screen flash, particle effects, and camera shake

I spruced up the game by adding a screen flash when an enemy hits the ship, particle effects when enemies are killed, a camera shake when an explosion happens or an enemy hits the ship, and sound effects for all of those events (plus clicking buttons in menus)

Difficulty updates

I had noticed that some players struggled with the first levels, while others breezed through them. To help with this, I added a dynamic difficulty system to make the game a bit easier for players on a losing streak and a bit harder for players who are getting comfortable. I also discouraged players from letting the tougher enemies through by making the special enemies do two damage and the boss enemy take away all three hearts. Lastly, I made enemies more likely to spawn close to each other to maximize the satisfaction of taking out two at once.

UI additions

To help better communicate with the player, I added a progress bar to indicate what fraction of the level’s enemies have spawned, as well as a reference page with information on all the different enemy types.

Debugging

Finally, I fixed a multitude of bugs, such as the player respawning at the wrong Z position when falling off the map or a second music player being created when the user returned to the title screen.

Spawner and Boss Enemies and Final Level

Spawner Enemy

Added the spawner enemy, which splits into two normal enemies of the same type when killed, and appears on level 18.

Boss Enemy

Added the boss enemy, which splits into two spawner enemies of random types once killed, and appears on level 24 (the last level)

Final Level

Tweaked the weights and enemy count for the last level so that one boss enemy would appear right at the end

Playtesting

Finished testing all the levels of the game and adjusted the weights and speeds of enemies to make later levels easier

Debugging

Fixed an issue where killing any spawned enemy would result in winning the level prematurely, and fixed the tutorial level, which had broken after recent changes

QoL Updates

Updated the checkmark asset to a better version, added an exit button to the main menu, and made enemies stop spawning after the count has been reached

I had been working on this game previously and gotten feedback on its alpha stage, but had stopped working on it recently. After I picked up the project again, my first main goal was to implement the feedback I had received on the alpha version, namely adding more enemy types. In my game, the player is on a small spaceship and must pick up ammo in geometric shapes to bring it to the corresponding launcher and use it to fend off the corresponding shape of enemy. As of now, I have added two out of four planned types. The first is the NOT enemy, which needs to be hit with any shape that is not its, then needs to be hit with its shape. The second is the hardy enemy, which simply needs to be hit twice. It’s worth noting that there was previously only one type of enemy, so I also added a weighted probability system for different types of enemies. I also made a fair amount of QoL updates, such as making new ammo spawn at a more intuitive time and adding offsets to different RNG instances to make the game seem more random (by preventing enemy placement from predicting enemy type, for example).

I got a bit caught up in making the project and neglected to write any devlogs, so here’s a summary. I started by designing the servo mounts for 3D printing, which took a while since I was learning FreeCAD and professional CAD in general as I went. My first 3D print was somewhat functional, but I hadn’t fully taken the servo wires into account, so I had to reposition the small gear. It also later turned out that the small gear wasn’t tall enough, so I also had to change that. Then, with some functional 3D printing, I turned to the code and started with a simple ESP web server that would save a file upload to a string. Once I got that, I made a simple SVG parser that would just take the points from the first polyline element and used trigonometry to determine where the servos should point based on 2D Cartesian coordinates. After further investigation of the servo mount, I also decreased some clearances and made the laser pointer mount thinner to allow it to bend. Next, with the full thing assembled, I had to do some minor debugging, including switching from atan to atan2. One of the servos also abruptly stopped working and refused to give any sort of accurate angles until I manually gave it a custom PWM range, so that was fun. After that, I did some experimentation in Illustrator and found that I could consistently get real-world units drawn by using a conversion of 0.353 mm/pt. My last two real features were adding a redo button that ran another trace with the previously uploaded file and breaking each edge into 20 smaller segments to allow a more accurate path between points.