Hello everyone! ?

Just a small update about my progress of the last week. Even though I had two additional free days I did not get as much done as I would have liked. ?

Even though I have reached all my goals I made for this week I still feel like I could have progressed faster if certain problems did not occur. I wasted way too much time on stupid bugs and other problems I had because of bad code.

Gameplay Balance

First big part of my focus for this week was on balancing the gameplay. Thanks to one of my friends I was able to get some feedback on the current alpha version of the project. I realized fast that the game was way too hard now. Cars were spawning way to fast and combined with the other enemies it was way too hard to reach the goal line. I spent a lot of time tweaking spawn rates and changing how the spawn system works to make the gameplay not only easier but also more fun. During this problem I realized how hard it can be to balance gameplay. A different perspective on my game helped to improve a lot of little things.

Sprites & Visual Stuff

Another important point was adding some more sprites to make the game look a little bit more interesting. As I said in my first post I am really bad at creating sprites and similar stuff. Because of this I mainly added some recolored versions of my car sprite and a new truck sprite.

These new sprites alone already made the game look a little bit more interesting. Additionally, I tried to create some small particle effects and a screen shake that appear when getting hit or when destroying enemies.

As you can see in the second animation I have also created a little score-pop-up that indicates how much points the player receives for destroying each enemy.

(Note: I recorded only a section of the screen for the animations. Should be obvious but who knows ?)

All effects have also been rounded up with more sound effects.

Furthermore, I have also implemented the third and maybe last item:

 The slow down item decreases the movement of objects, except the player, by 80%. This helps the player to reach the goal line even if the road gets really crowded.

Menus & Other Stuff

I have also worked a lot on menu navigation and cleaning up already existing menus. Except from the options menu the game can be played completely without a mouse. Sadly, it is not possible yet to open the menu from during a round (which is a requirement for the challenge).

Additionally, at the end of the round your score will be compared to your high score and it will be tracked if you manage to beat it!

Next Goals

My main goals for the next week will be:

1. Finally adding a music track
2. Adding a pause menu
3. Maybe some more sprites and effects

After this I should have completed all necessary tasks for the challenge and still have some time for polishing, bug fixing and adding details! At this point I am very confident that I will finish this project in time.

Thanks for reading and until next week!!

- Znippy

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