Posted October 01, 2020 by Syrus Turner
This week's main activity was replacing the little blue and green lurchers that have been standing in for the UndeAAd, and replacing the green target that was Static!
That's the last we'll see of this little fellow.
I started with the Generator's animations, and they've made little cameos in previous devLogs, but now let's take a proper look.
Static has two states that everything branches off of; a Neutral state (On the left, above) and a Hungry state (On the right, above). The Neutral state is what is shown when generally moving around and things are going well. The Hungry state is when Static is right next to an enemy. We'll explore the transitions for the Hungry state next.
When Static lands on top of an enemy, the Hungry state changes to his Eating state, as the UndeAAd is destroyed! When this animation is triggered, the player's Score will increase too. That will be elaborated on in the next devLog. I believe this simple loop gets across what Static is doing to those UndeAAd.
The last two animations are for the 'Alarmed' and 'Shutdown' states. The 'Alarmed' state will trigger when there is an UndeAAd next to the Generator; a clue that it it might be time to hot-foot it back to the Generator and destroy the UndeAAd near it! I felt that big red '!!!' would be a good indicator that something was wrong.
The last animation 'Shutdown' , the heart being broken and Static's screen going blank, won't loop when it's triggered. That animation will play when the Generator's life total reaches zero and will signify a game over.
Over all, the graphics and animation have come a long way from their beginnings as targets and blue/green lurchers, but not as far as I was hoping in the time frame. I would've liked significantly more time to work on the graphics, but time didn't allow for it, and I had to dramatically simplify the graphics to make up for it. I've certainly come to appreciate just how difficult it is to manage time vs quality when it comes to producing pixel art and animating it on a strict time limit.
Next DevLog; UI and Polish!