[Explosive Dawn] Spring, Week 10 - Making It Shiny

Greetings,

Our team-on-one gave us pretty much everything we needed to know for getting everything done before Gold. Some of the big things we hit on were weapons, enemies, sound, and networking.

Our weapons are going to be enhanced a little, visually speaking. We're going to be adding small lightish streaks behind them just to make them look cooler. Our enemies are getting completely new AI. We're even adding a whole new enemy, the Spawner. We have a more definitive plan for sound, and we've designed the gameplay for multiplayer, mostly concerning the power-ups. In the cooperative mode, there will be power-ups that help your ally, like a defense bonus or faster regeneration; then, in the competitive mode, there will be power-ups that hinder your opponent, like reversing the controls or darkening the lighting.

Our graphics programmer has been hard at work getting the game to look very shiny. We currently have a paper texture bump map with some 3D lighting (even though it's just a 2D game). The light follows the player, so it looks very dynamic and completely different than before. The player's tail now changes colors as he or she picks up power-ups. (For example, if you have the laser, which is blue, the tail will become blue. Then, if you get the green spreadshot, your tail will be half green and half blue.) This will really help getting players to know more about the power-ups and be more aware of which power-ups they have. The next step for graphics is to get the bump mapping and lighting onto the rest of the game, like menus and networked mode.

I spent today working on a lot of art assets for the game. I designed a new enemy. It is an enemy which spawns little enemies. Its sprite is completely done, and it now has both spawning and dying animations. I just finished creating dying animations for all of the rest of the enemies. Another thing I did was add color to the health leaves so that it was more noticeable. The health bar fit so well into the style that players just didn't notice it, so I think adding the color, which changes based on how much player the health has, will help with that problem.

Left: Spawning Enemy. Right: Power-Up Items for Multiplayer.

So yeah, that's what we're doing for this week. We'll see you at the end of Week 11! Peace.

Sincerely,
Alicia Yeargin