Devlog - Presentation and Graphics

‘Presentation and Graphics’ is the subject of this week’s devlog.

Overview and implementation

This will be a short devlog as I achieved far less this week than intended. The intention was to create (and implement in game) art for the player, enemies and level background.

That did not get completed. What was created were some (unpolished) graphics for the player, with a few different sprites to show the player’s different movement states.

www.piskelapp.com was used to create the player art, and will be used for the rest of the game’s graphics. I chose to use Piskel as it was less intimidating than some of the other digital art options for an inexperienced artist like me.

Creating pixel art in Piskel:

The unity animation system was used to switch between different player sprites based on whether the player is idle or flying.

Player sprite changing, based on movement state:

Feedback and review

No feedback was collected this week as I did not have a build of the game ready in time.

As time is flying and the ‘launch date’ of my game approaches, I realise that I am going to have to prioritise a bit so that the game is not released in a half-baked state.

The game currently has a small number of mechanics, less than originally planned. For now the focus will be on making the game  look and feel nice rather than adding new mechanics, with the secondary focus being making things fully functional (so that a player can start, finish, and restart the game).

A rough priorities list going forward:

• Creating some graphics for the enemies, background and laser beam
• Adding a timer that resets when the player dies (the goal of the game being to survive as long as possible)
• Adding a main menu with a play button, and a high scores sections
• Tweaking the feel of movement and fighting (adjusting the speed that the player and robots move at, for instance)