This week I added some background music to each level. Each of the three tracks I selected are from Eric Taylor’s Royalty-Free Music Pack, which he has generously provided to the game development community under the creative commons license. These tracks are great for cranking up the drama in each level.
The old flamethrower sound effect sounded a little broken, so I picked a new fire sound and changed how the file played. It used to play the sound as each flame bullet fired, which caused a stuttering sound when fired rapidly. Now when a flame bullet is fired, it first checks if the flamethrowerAudioFinished flag is set. If true, it resets the flag, plays the audio, and sets a timer to reset the flag again in one second. Trust me, it sounds great.
One of my teammates wanted to implement an ammo type with a cool-down charge. I thought it would be cool to display this in the UI as an arc that moves around that ammo icon. Right after it’s fired, a red circle surrounds the icon and the icon itself dims to show that it’s not yet ready to fire again. As the cool-down timer ticks down, the circle changes to an arc that retracts counter-clockwise around the icon. Then when it’s done, the icon lights up again.
Lastly, I updated the UI to accommodate 4 different base ammo types and 3 different turret types.
We’re almost done with this project! All that’s left is to squash some bugs and add a bit of last-minute polish. I’ve had a lot of fun working with my group and have learned a lot about game design. This team has put in some great work.
I’ll end this blog with a little game trailer I made for our project last weekend. While the game isn’t finished quite yet, it showcases much of what we’ve accomplished.
