Dev Diary - 17 Dec

14 DEC 2020

With almost all art swapped out, it was time to fix up the placeholder moving platforms. Right now they are just the health bar filler that’s stretched because it looked good enough. The nice thing about using bad placeholders is my heart didn’t break swapping it out. Instead, I went for an approach where the platform is the same as the rest of the ship’s design, but with a red powering crystal and a drill at the bottom. I think it looks pretty good, and it fits the original parameters pretty well.

15 DEC 2020

Got the platform officially in, and adjusted everything to make it work. I’m not carzy in love with it, but I think it looks cute and it stands out enough for players to recognize that a platform is there rather than just another piece of floor. That’s also why I changed the background where the platforms can move, to telegraph the path they will take. I also fixed a bug where the tall enemy’s bullets would fly indefinitely, and gave it a disappearing animation to show it running out of distance.

16 DEC 2020

I was going to work on a few things until I realized that realigning the placeholder background tiles for the moving platforms was a lot more arduous than I anticipated. It took quite a few hours to even just go through the first few levels, but I want to make sure everything looks clean and predictable for the player. If they see the background stop, they should be allowed to trust that it stops there. This is the milestone for fine details, so I’m gonna nail them!

17 DEC 2020

Got everything pixel perfect to align with their backgrounds and movements. It’s all looking pretty good, and with this step done, the last of anything cosmetic is swapping the placeholder crew members with official art and then all placeholder art will be gone. I’m debating still adding a bit more props, but it depends on how it looks and how much time I have. It’s going to take a surprisingly long time to work on audio if the bullet sounds are any indicator, and there will be little to show for it in GIF form but that will be the next step.