Week 5 - User Interface and Polish

Week 5 - User Interface and Polish

This week I really focused on getting my game to a near complete state, I worked on lots of things both inside the game and also involving the UI.  This week I added: 

• Proper UI system - title, death, settings, controls scenes ect. 
• Complete tile map 
• New NPC
• Checkpoints
• A way to end the game
• New NPC portrait art 
• New graphics for magic 
• Fixed cinemachine camera settings 
• Added a new short play mode

UI: 

This week I finished up the UI I quickly started last week and properly linked everything up, and gave it a cohesive theme.  I did this by using a separate background and title art, so that the title could be placed where I wanted it in relation to the UI without looking stretched on the screen. This also allowed me to reuse this background image in other UI scenes where the games title would be in the way of the information on the screen. 

Tile Map + Checkpoints + End of game.

This week I finished up my tile map, and added various checkpoints around allowing for the player to save their position in the world without having to restart from the beginning.  Finishing the tile map, was an easy but time consuming task as I wanted it to still feel random but also still nice looking. I also added in some animated tiles for a waterfall / in the river using the tutorials from class to help me. 

I also added in checkpoints around the map, I included these in the tutorial, and added a particle effect when the player stands on it, to give feedback on if the game has been saved or not. 

After this I wanted to think of a way to have the story of my game end for the player. So using  NPC dialogue I decided I would have the player be sent to an area hopefully far enough out of the way it isn't explored before talking with the NPCs and put the same scene switching script on a collider in that area to trigger an end of game screen. 

New NPC + Portrait Art + Magic Graphics: 

This week I added in my final NPC Ali!! A cat who the player finds towards the end of the game who guides the player towards the end area. 

As well as this new NPC I also added in new portraits that pop up during dialogue, making the game feel more polished and cohesive. 

I also added in a portrait for the ghost guide at the start of the game this week too!!

The final thing I wanted to work on involving the graphics of this game was the players magic. Until now I had been using a copy of the bullet we used in tutorials. But this style didn't suit what I wanted for my game. So I played around with the trail renderer, and also added a particle effect to create the sort of golden light magic vibe I wanted. 

New Game Mode + Camera fix: 

This week I wanted to implement a new game mode, but was unsure if I would have time to implement it. I wanted to do this to add a small bit of replayability to my game, as well as another aspect that was more fun. It was just a simple game mode idea of an endless fighting mode where the player sees how long they can live + how many enemies they can kill. I used a lot of this from the earlier space invader tutorials, and was able to get it implemented to a point I'm happy with. 

To do this I just made a flat square tile map, and reused all my player and enemy prefabs. All I had to change was the ability for kills to be counted, and the spawner to spawn enemies infinitely. I'm happy with the result of this and think It adds well to my game without taking away from the core story mechanic. 

I also got feedback to add a lookahead component to my cinemachine camera, to help make it more clear to the player where they were traveling withing the world. I think this helped a lot with the walking feel more smooth and the world easier to explore.