This Is The End

This is the sort-of end anyway - I hope to continue developing this game with lots of exiting mechanics and perhaps I'll post them here; But in all of the excitement of the end of year show, and just getting everything done, I almost forgot a sign-off post. This game can now be played on Kongregate and Waterfront Games - Don't forget to comment and leave feedback if you play in order to make the game better.

I now have a Twitter where you should be able to find updates of recent work (If and when I remember) and you can also visit my Portfolio if you want to see more or are interested in contacting me.

I hope you enjoyed following this game's progress, and really... just my progress in general.

Goodbye For Now!

Sounds Good

I forgot to mention last time that I added in Player saving and loading just before I uploaded it for feedback  - it took a little while but the levels now only display if the level has been accessed before. A player can now also reset their progress with a button.
I added the extra level recently too, So I now have 12 levels of increasing difficulty, which seems to fill up the level select screen nicely. Talking of level select screens, I forgot the button on the Level complete popup which takes you back to the level select if you do not wish to proceed to the next level.. So that is now implemented.

Anyway, for while now I have been implementing sounds and music into the game; It's been quite a nice change from the usual stuff I end up doing. all of the sounds I've used are simply heavily edited sounds from freeSFX.co.uk as I really do not have the time or the resources at the moment to make my own. My main focus on sound effects was giving feedback to players on main important aspects of the game, so at the moment I have sounds for plugs going in and out of sockets, powering up sounds, and powering down sounds.
The music which I added to the game was to make the game a little more interesting and polished, I made the music from scratch much like our group game's music. I must admit, it took a little while longer than I wanted it to, but I think it was probably worth it in the end.

My final addition to the game will most likely be a Win-screen that appears when you complete all of the levels - As of yet I'm not sure how extravagant it is going to end up.

Feedback

I posted the new version of the game back up on Waterfrontgames.com and managed to get a few people to play, or at least look at the game's progress. The feedback I received was much more positive than I anticipated; everyone seemed to have a better idea of what to do because of the new tutorial that has been added; One person refused to read the tutorial screen and had severe troubles when new mechanics were added. The progression was seen as quite reasonably paced too. everybody seemed to like the new look, and the added use of the rope and increase in colour intensity of plugs and sockets meant that players found it much easier to see where everything was and to adjust things accordingly. A lot of people spent considerable amounts of time playing around with the physics of the rope itself; Making shapes, swirling and generally using it as an additional toy, which I wasn't expecting.

I need to make between 1 and 6 additional levels in order to make my game bigger and more complete. Adding sounds would be nice, even if they are simple clicks and whooshes of plugs going in and out of sockets. The one main thing that I am really dissatisfied with at the moment is the GUI, and I'm still trying to find some definite answers to making it look better and working out exactly what makes Unity GUI look good without spending years coding and designing lots of individual and messy sections. My research has found some websites and forum posts about making some bitmap GUI's, but they are very vague and/or complicated. I must admit, 2D artwork is not my strong point, but I will continue to try and find an answer to my conundrum.

Another problem I seem to have is that when my game is displayed on waterfrontgames.com, the right side is cut off slightly; this doesn't happening in Unity or the exported version on my PC, so I am a bit confused about that.

Pushing all of the right buttons.

 So I've been working on the Menu's for the game a bit more recently; I was going to do a interactive menu for the game (such as dragging a plug to a socket labelled "play" to begin), but I decided against it due to the time I have and the fact it would probably make players even more confused.

I currently hate the buttons and most of the HUD due to it being the default look; I need to look into changing it when I've got all of the functionality and content into the game.

After pressing play you now get taken to the level select screen; I think I might actually be getting used to the creation and placement of the HUD elements because I now have it dynamically creating all of the buttons and placing them based on how many levels there are in total; there is room for three rows of 6 buttons, but I would at least like to add one more level to even up the number before I've finished.

When you press one of the level buttons you get taken to that level. I think I found this easier because I've recently done a level select screen for one of my other games, and although the code is completely different, I think the principals I had to cover transferred. 

Once you enter a level, there is currently no way of getting back to any of the other menu's, so I will need either a pause menu of an on-screen button to allow players to do this.

One level at a time

I managed to get in a screen which pops up when you complete a level; Also learnt quite a few controls for the GUI including colour and size;

the second line automatically updates with the current level; I'm hoping for there to be more information and buttons eventually, or at least a picture.

Colours are magic

I've completed mapping texturing the objects now; I think i spent a lot of time on them considering you can't really see them very well in standard game view.

The White sections of the objects are coloured when they have set colours - I left them with no diffuse texture so that it was more clear. additionally, creating textures which did not confuse the player with extra bright and distracting colours was a large part of the texturing process.

Coloured parts of the objects

I'm thinking about adding additional coloured parts to the output part of the hubs, because currently the only coloured part is the plug (unlike the input which has wires and other things)

additionally I added a functional close button to the tutorial popup; at the moment you have to press close on every level and it will re-appear when there is new text on the next level; I may eventually need a global "turn off all help" option.

holding down the space bar now shows this colour wheel overlay; it should help players with finding and deciding what colours they need to use with each-other to get the colours they need to complete the level.

first thing this morning I added a time passed box, just to test and see what it looked liked and how it felt. at the moment it doesn't really fit I must admit.

I think before i get much further, I either need a screen that appears when you complete a level, or a level select screen. or both.

I haven't added any levels recently, But I think 10 or so levels are a good starting point for any game, even if they are mostly tutorials.

It's not what's on the inside, It's what's on the outside that counts.

I have Been UV Mapping for a while; Before I do much more I need to get rid of all of the untextured and white areas of my models so I can decide what to do with the rest (to make it more user friendly).

here are some awesome white checkerpattern UV's. I'm not going to lie, I really dislike this part, Which is probably one of the many reasons why I stupidly left it out when I made the models.

I now only have the input to UV map now I think.

adding the new UV mapped objects might be difficult, as a lot of the objects now have a lot of information on them which isn't in the 3D file, I have to ensure it gets copied over to the new objects.

I also made some textures for one of the pieces too - I'm actually really happy with how it turned out, it's a shame you can never see it in this much detail in game.