Thursday, 16 May 2013

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.


Friday, 10 May 2013

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.