Moving the HUD around

The HUD seems to have gotten in the way of gameplay.  So I'm fixing it.  Originally I tried this idea:

but that didn't really seem to help with gameplay.  It easily got in the way and so I moved it around.

It looks much better, but there is still some work to be done.  Lives is going to be moved to the bottom-right corner because the middle seems odd.  And instead of lives as a number, it's going to be changed to little smiley faces (five if you have five lives, etc.).  I still think that some art for the HUD might look cleaner, but we're going to have to wait and see what problems we need to fix first.  We should be getting some good feedback from the beta testing.

Naked without Internet

I spent this weekend in St. George and I thought I would have Internet access.  I was wrong.  I ended up working on something that I wasn't assigned, but still needed to get done.

When the player finishes a level, there is little information about what the score is and how that translates to stars.  I've been implementing it to show the player how well they did.

Mute broken

We had some mute stuff working a few weeks ago, but it's broken.  I'm working on fixing that within the menu, although there is some debate on whether or not it's needed.  I figure that if the player wants to mute, they'll do it on the TV instead of going through the menu.

I'm pretty sure that in the end, this is going to be scrapped.

Showing you Skills

I've been put in charge of showing the actual score in the game.  I thought that it would be nice to be able to have three separate scores, one for time, one for collectibles, and one for deaths.  This can effectively make each level 3 levels.  The player can play the level for different reasons and each of them changes the gameplay enough to keep you entertained for more time.  

I'm working on showing each score (0-3 stars for each score) and putting them on the selection screen for the levels.  I've got it working, but it's starting to look REALLY cluttered.  We're going to have to talk about how we will change that.  

Fixing our Collectables

I've been taking out the apples.  They don't seem to fit the gameplay and I'm coming up with some other stuff.  Diamonds and Gems is the first thing that I'm coming up with.

We're chuggin' along!

Tetris

This week has been busy with tasks but I feel like our game is really coming along.  We were each tasked with making new levels.  The more we make, the more fun this game is going to be.

One of the things that I heard from people when they were playing our game is how much they liked the Pac Man level.  They said that it was a great idea and that we could really use old games as a great start to playing this game.  So low and behold, a genius idea:

That's right.  Tetris. Pure awesomeness.

So for the most part, I got it all done.  I'm still working on the menu placement stuff.

A Busy Week Ahead

After sifting though the grad student suggestions and going through what we wanted to work on, this is my list of things I'll be working on to get done by Tuesday.

1. Make a disappearing particle effect trail that follows the player.

2. Make one level using the level editor. 

3. Define some rules that should work for scoring

4. Make all backgrounds a solid black.

5. Make the menu placement stuff relative to screen size. NO Hard coded values.

6. Change any hazard that moves to be a circle.

It is a little eclectic but it's a good list.