Keybricks - Development journey

Keybricks proved to be much more difficult than the first one, Tricat. I've faced many more challenges like proper structure, creating a decently working game manager, working with audio, creating audio, writing scalable code, ...

Some highlights:

• Keeping a `Main` scene is awesome! Through various tutorials,  I learned that scene management can be easier.  In a 'Main' node, I keep the scene that the player sees, while keeping important systems like the AudioManager in check.  This proved helpful in keeping things organized, and efficient in writing code.
• AudioManager? Having a dedicated node to audio management of sound effects proved to be a much better, and much more scalable method.
• Expanding the scope just a little, doubled development time: Keeping this game as close to the original as possible was the end-goal. However, I could not resist adding a small touch of my own. With the keyboard theme decided, I wanted the keycaps to spell something out as they're destroyed.
  • Development time doubled as I needed to create a system that randomizes letters on every attempt of a level, while still keeping it possible to spell out the entire word.
  • Spelling out the entire word was initially the goal. I wanted to add a timer in which you had to spell the word out, otherwise the level would fail. This proved to be too "unnecessary" and drove away from the original idea of the game.
  • Finally, I decided that this mechanic should add to the game, not diminish fun. Hence why there is no timer, and why spelling the word out simply leads to having a 2x multiplier on your score.
• Keeping code scalable gets really difficult: As the amount of nodes increased, the amount of code increased. The more code, the less clarity I had on the code.
  • Inheritance proved to be important here, especially for creating various levels while keeping common logic in one node.
  • Clarity and code structure became difficult as more nodes began to share responsibility.

There's a lot more I've learned, and I cannot wait to pick up all up with me as I create game #3, which will be a Frogger clone! Please look forward to it!