Post Jam Update v0.9 A bit of cleanup + some add ons


Update time again, for this one the main feature is testing out a Game Over screen.

This screen is not final, as most things are at the moment in the project but it's here nonetheless XD it displays the player's current High Score, as well as the final score obtained upon death ( to know your score even if your high score isn't beaten ) it comes with it's own little game over jingle i made itterating on the main song that plays during gameplay.

For other stuff, the second biggest one is a bit of UI cleanup, taking into account feedback received about readability, i put a bit of an outline around the font and framed every element into their own semi transparent box, i settled on putting the spin time indicator in the middle, having everything score and combo related on the left, while having the high score staying on its own on the right, of course everything here can still be submitted to changes.

The final and most discrete feature is the pause function, at the moment it's mainly here as a debug tool i used in order to take screenshots ^^ so it has no proper "PAUSE" display to indicate anything, but just so you know it's here on the tab key for keyboard and your "start" equivalent on controllers


So thet's that, here's the changelog for a quick recap of everything :


Changelog V0.9 :

  • Added Game Over screen, displays score obtained at the end of the round as well as the player's current saved highscore
  • UI elements cleaned up and re organized, every info about score and combos are displayed on the right, spin attack bar on the center, and high score on the top right
  • Debug Pause feature added to pause/resume the game at the push of start/tab button functionnal but has no pause display yet

Files

SpinDef_Post_Jam_v0.9_Browser.zip Play in browser
Oct 28, 2019

Get Spinner Defender

Comments

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(+1)

Hi! Long time no see :)

I really like the new UI, and I appreciate you taking my feedback :) Now it's really clear how much spin power I have left, well done! The game over music is awesome, just like the background music :D It's really coming together as a full game with better UI and stuff :P As sztrovacsek said it would be nice to skip the game over screen as it is a bit long :P Also a fade-out-in transition between the 2 musics would be great. I also like how you are using different colours for the UI, it makes the high score stand out which is good. Next I would recommend changing your font to go with the theme of the game, maybe some space or pixel font would work well :)

Now this is just a thought and I don't know if it will actually look good, but it might be cool to have the spin itself change colour depending on how much power you have left. Like how the spin power bar at the top changes colour over time, I'm wondering if it would be better if the spin itself also changed colour so that the player doesn't have to look at the UI all the time for such vital information.

Anyways I'm having a lot of fun playing your game now it looks great! Keep it up! :D

Also I finally got around to working on Switch Run! Yay! :P Feel free to check it out now :)

PS. My high score for your game is 5340 :P

hey no worries XD 

Glad you like the new UI it's not a big change but the reshuffling hopefully made things much clearer to read (especially the score which from feedback was a bit messy with the combos and such) I'll probably change the font further down the line, if i can find a free to use one that can fit the game's visuals (which i'll try to revamp a bit as well) if you want to have a bit more details on what's ahead for this game check out my reply to sztrovacsek i listed everything up :D.

I noted the issue with the game over screens unskippable delay (i explained in the recap list why it's here) and i'll shorten it out so that the transition from Game to GameOver and back flows a bit better, and if the short delay still feels annoying i'll remove it altogether if necessaray, cool that you liked the music still XD it's a simple variation of the main tune but i felt it did the job well for a GameOver jingle :p

Good to hear you're still working on your game as well, i'll check out what's new then ^^

Also cool high score Congrats, glad you had fun playing the game  :)

:)

Yeah I read your reply, it was so long :P But I'm glad to see you have  pretty clear roadmap, I'm excited to see the new improvements :) Yeah no rush for the fonts and stuff, I just think it will be a nice addition.

Thanks! :D

Yeah i'm not good at clear and short explainations ^^' but at least it explains a bit what's coming up 

Oh, nice, I like the new interface.
The game over screen is a good addition, but make it skippable, because if you die a lot (like me :D), it will be quickly annoying to always wait for the music to end... :D
Your next upgrade will be the last, or are you planning the work beyond v1.0?

(+1)

Thanks glad you liked the changes :)

I wanted to have the game over screen not be accidentally skippable so that people can see their score if the high one didn't change, but i probably overdid it with the delay being the whole music XD, i'll try a shorter delay maybe so that people can still read their score and not accidentally zoom past it, but if it's still found annoying no problem i'll make it skippable again ^^

Nope next upgrade won't be the last (i just didn't plan my versioning numbers well :p) although i'll try my best to avoid feature creep, what i plan to do is to still add a few things that are still missing (i'll quickly list it out for more clarity):

  • Want to add another "lose" condition, the city integrity or something similar so that player death is not the only game over
  • Got 2 "experimental" features that are opted out at the moment but that i'm testing.
    1) The attack's recharge triggered by killing ennemies (which the idea was given in feedback during the jam ^^) but i'm not sure about how it'll affect game balance so i'll probably restore it and see what players think and then decide if i should keep it or not accordingly.
    2) Destroyable ground, not an advanced destruction but having the blocks have their own integrity so that they can be destroyed and if no ground remains game over (but this could be problematic to defend from the shooting ennemies so i still need further testing before)
  • Might try out to have a player health instead of insta kill but this is something i gotta add and test to see if it doesn't break anything XD
  • Maybe have a proper menu screen with a "game start" and "quit game" features and a proper pause instead of the debug one i used to finally add screenshots to the game's page (better late than never :p)
  • Maybe try to have smoother transitions between scenes like a short fade effect or something
  • Finally since i'm mainly learning the code side of things, once i reach a functionnal state with every completed feature then i'll try to make a small graphical overhaul to have a bit cleaner sprites and everything.

So there you have it, still some things left to do, it goes a bit slow since i work on and off depending on how busy i get with mandatory IRL stuff, but i'll get there eventually :p in order not to confuse i'll probably have next update be a V0.9.1 cause i would consider a 1.0 to be something complete, and with this project i want to move on to other things once i feel this feels finished and i've learned enough to go into another project without the "hurdles" i've encountered (i know they'll be other ones but at least i progressed XD)

Sorry for the "wall of text" but hopefully this awnsers everything regarding the V0.9 stuff :)

Now, that's a lot of info! :D

For the delays I use: yield(get_tree().create_timer(1.0), "timeout") - where you can set the delays in seconds.

Glad to hear you still planning to work on it, this list have good ideas, good luck implementing all of them! :D

Yeah, I know it's not easy to manage time between developing and IRL stuff. My last update was like... (*checks log*)... 3 weeks ago... (*HOLY MOLY!*)... so... there's that... :D
(Although, I teased some goodies on Twitter, which got a positive response, so I promise/hope it's worth the wait... :D)

Haha yeah sorry bout that wall of text :p, anyway the delay fix is in the works with the newt update, working on and off again but it'll be there eventually XD

Yep i've used a few yield timers for some things in the code, like i said i'll try a shorter delay at first so that people don't skip and miss their score if it's under the high one and if it's still annoying i'll remove it altogether.

I'll still be working on it so that i can learn enough to cover every possible stuff i could need for other games and make this one a bit more of a complete and polished mini game, hopefully these ideas will help acheiving that :p

For sure it is XD delays for updates and replies everywhere but hey that's solo gamedev in a nutshell ! Haha well 3 weeks isn't that bad i mean you've done quite a lot all things considered :) cool to hear you got some positive feedback on twitter, not much of a social media person :( but i'll see what goodies you got planned when you update, and i'm sure it'll be worth the wait, afterall you do have googly eyes and bullet time XD

It's alright! :D

Yep, you can definitely learn a lot from doing mini projects, and you can reuse ideas, code snippets in bigger games later.

I'm not a social media person either, but I found Twitter very useful to engage with the indie community.

And, about the update... IT'S LIVE, FINALLY! :D