Week 5 - Polish & UI

This week marks a ramping down in game development, as everything nears the finish line. Still, there is quite a bit to cover this week, such as fully implemented graphics, from entities, animations, backgrounds, UI, particles to post-processing effects. A small intro screen has been created to give some context for the game's setting, additional SFX and music, and various adjustments to presentation and gameplay. Lets get into it!

Graphics

I've finally gotten around to implementing as many sprites as I can. There could definitely be some other animations for certain actions like enemies spawning, getting hurt, falling, and possibly animations for other states but I just didn't have the time to create these. Apart from that I'm pretty pleased with everything I've been able to draw, and I've only needed to include assets in a few different places. These places are the background and the UI, both found from free assets on itch.io. The background was just too large an undertaking for me, and there are lots of good UI graphics out there already, and it's easy enough to find something that fits my game.

SFX & Music

I finally got around to adding SFX to the rest of the enemies, so they now have SFX for being hurt and damaged, which varies in pitch each hit for a little variety. There is also music that plays during a wave, which definitely helps add to the action ambience. It's crazy what a little bit of music does to improve the vibe of the game, it just feels kind of empty without a constant source of sound like a background track. I was hoping to create my own tracks, but time and other commitments didn't permit this, and it was a pretty lofty goal anyway.

Obviously, it's a bit difficult to show off the SFX and music with images, so I guess as usual you'll just have to play the game!

Misc

Alongside all this audio visual polish, we have some small changes to gameplay elements that help bring subtle variety and improved experiences. For instance, zombies now spawn randomly around the graveyard, so the player doesn't always see perfectly neat rows of zombies shambling towards them. Rocket launchers now have a limit to the amount of enemies they can kill in one explosion, to stop sound spam and also the possibility for the player to round up all the zombies in a wave and potentially dispatch all of them at once. Animation speeds have been adjusted slightly for all the weapons, and the starting rocket ammo has been reduced by a lot. There are probably other random little bits that I've forgotten. but they obviously weren't that important.

Conclusion

This week had a lot of graphics and sound added, as well as polish. It doesn't make for much to write about, but it does make a drastic difference in game. It's kind of crazy to look back over the weeks and see how different it is now, visually. I felt like the post-processing effects, specifically the colour tint, did so much to bring fairly sub-par assets together into a more cohesive form (translation: I'm glad the post-processing covers up my crappy art). It's been a great time working on this game over the past five weeks, but I can't lie, I am running out of steam. However, I'm so close to the finish line now, and it really is just about changing balance based on user testing, chasing bugs, and more polish.