DevLog 4: Presentation and Graphics

This week was all about graphical upgrades. I didn’t make crazy changes this week, but I decided that I’ll try and make sure the graphics were consistent.

I also decided to replace a few different enemies with new types and start building my new tilemap so I can start working on the background.

So firstly, here’s Forg’s home!

Not the most beautiful art (not very good at art honestly), but it’s not bad for a start. I might fix the windows to give them less shine or only give the shine to certain windows.

Spoiling some other upcoming updates, here comes the skyscraper sections. The skyscrapers have different designs, and the glass has multiple iterations, with the more city-scape skyscrapers to have the typical yellow lit-up windows.

And now we move onto improved enemies. There’s two that I made changes to (and another non-visual change). The first being the sentry. Originally a simple red box with a yellow warning sign, it was a static enemy that just fired odd blue bullets at the player. It was fine, and maybe something that could be used in an expanded game. But I wanted to give the enemies a different, more animal like design. So, we got bats!

These little guys fly up and down, and fire screech-bullets! I like the look of the screech-bullets a lot more than the original bullets and honestly it was the best I could come up with.

And finally, the tanks.

Forg’s fighting a war, and people brought these weapons to attack his homeland. Whilst ground or air troops such as the anti-frogs and bats exist as direct attacking characters, I wanted the tank to be more of a smaller beginner threat. They’ll come for you if you get too close, but they don’t fire and mostly just move back and forth.

My final addition is the beginning of the title screen.

This title screen will likely have a level select, and I’m working on commissioning a title screen from an artist friend.

And now welcome to the feedback corner

Feedback Time!

This weeks feedback was less graphically inclined.

• Make changes to the wall-jump. The wall-jump as of now only works when you’re directly squished against the wall. That makes it awkward when you pull away from the wall by 0.0001cm and you suddenly can’t jump, and you just fall. Adding a coyote timer to that, and also making the player not immediately slide down the wall after letting go is in progress.
• Other notes mainly include that the bat fire rate was way too high, and you couldn’t really react in time to the firing. I decided to leave the bullet speed the same but halve the fire rate. The bullets also fly infinitely, which I have updated to only last a few seconds.