The Path of the Game Dev — Day 6

Saving progress…

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Despite having the day off, I wanted to make progress on my project to make up for the time off. Since I had finished most of the coursework it was time to move on to Phase 1 of the final project.

Phase 1 is testing what knowledge I had acquired through the 2D Game Development course and really pushed for me to think of new solutions to the challenges it presented. At the current moment I’ve implemented several of the features Phase 1 requires, most notably some new collectible power ups and adding a deteriorating shield mechanic (so now the shield can take up to three hits with appropriate visualization that changes on each hit).

But there’s still more to do! Left on the list is implementing a power up for another alternate projectile mode, a UI element that tracks the thruster charge, and a camera shake when the player is damaged. Even though it sounds simple, it’s far from it!

• For the alternate projectile mode I have to figure out what exactly I want — do I want homing missiles? Perhaps a giant beam instead of a small laser blast?
• The charge/cool down system for the thruster sounds easy enough, but I’ll have to figure out how I want to represent that in the UI.
• Lastly, the camera shake is something I’ve started researching. There are quite a few ways to do it but I’m not familiar with any of the suggested methods. Will need to do more research on the differences between them.

Let’s hope for clarity soon!

Biggest takeaways from the day: The good — there are many ways to do things! The bad — there are many ways to do things.

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Progress saved!