It’s been another good couple of weeks.
I’ve only worked sparingly on one or two game-based projects, but this is the first one that has made consistent progress. Probably because I use this posts as a way to keep on track (and “working”) and because it is a way to chart out next steps in small modular tasks and objectives.
I know I’ve grown in programming and (a little bit, admittedly) pixel arting experience, I didn’t expect this to be so heavy in project management. Not that I’m complaining!
With that personal back pat, let me give some credits.
I have a font and (at least) one sound.
The font is VG5000 by Justin Bihan and is available from the Velvetyne Type Foundry.In a lot of ways the font reminds me of older systems: blocky, lots of right angles. But it also modern in its curves. And quirky – like the capital “Q”. Of course, I’ll be crediting both in the program itself.
The sound is from NenadSimic available on the Freesound.org site. This one is also dangerously perfect. I wanted something understated, not some epic explosion. This one is as the title describes “muffled distant explosion”. Your interceptor launcher, of course, is miles away from these cities that are being attacked. Your failure isn’t going to sound epic.
Also, I picked up a good tip in Godot. When you import a sound you can have it trim the file. For example, this particular sound is about 5 seconds long (if not a little longer), but I think most of us can only hear about 1-2 seconds of the actual wave. Godot will trim the ends (and the begins), which saves you on space. Look at the “Import” tab on the sound file, under the “Edit” section for the “Trim” checkbox.
This week’s heavy lift was, as expected, the radar system. I used the canvas modulate to give a nice green color and quickly made another cloud sprite (which will change, as it is hideous). When you tap “R”, radar mode is activated which, effectively, make the clouds a bit transparent. So, when it is an overcast day, you can see the incoming threats! The difficult part, was toggling the system with the leveling changes. Because the cloud generator (which makes the clouds) and the existing clouds all had to change from “normal” to “radar” on mode changes.
The weather system was a piece of cake. I did a little extra work and used a GDScript dictionary with some key-words to facilitate.
And finally, I fixed interceptors/hostile deleted each other without an explosion and the city explosion animation.
In terms of next steps, I think I will focus on a mockup for a title screen and creating panels for information. This is an arcade-style game, at the moment, so I’m going to maintain that feel. And to make a disincentive to using the radar system, constantly, I’ll put in some spoof enemies. Not duds or decoys, but erroneous radar returns.
Next Steps:
- Title Screen
- Radar System
- Enemy spoofs.
- Art:
- Text box panel
- New interceptor launcher
- Sound/Music
- Future Fixes:
- Hostiles continue to target destroyed cities
Tired Fox Projects 