Monkey See Monkey Doom Weekly Reflection 11: The Final Pieces
Previous Week’s Work
This week was devoted to the credit and instructions screen of Monkey See Monkey Doom. I thought these features would be quick and relatively mindless features to add but once I started working on them my goals for these screens quickly became more elaborate taking what I originally anticipated as a 2 day project and turning it into a 5 day one.
For my credit screen I knew I wanted the illustrations happening behind the text to exist within the zoo, based on the credit button from the home screen but wasn’t sure how to actually make that happen, once again doubting my artistic ability to render what I had in mind (if this project teaches me anything hopefully its to stop doubting myself so I don’t constantly prove myself wrong). Using a reference image of the Bronx Zoo’s Monkey House I illustrated my own Monkey House in the sticker style seen throughout Monkey See Monkey Doom.
Minor inspiration struck when I placed the rope out of one of the windows of the building pointing towards the monkeys escape. Continuing with the crime scene motif I placed caution tape and evidence markers around the building to non verbally communicate the story of escape that sets the backdrop for my game. While I still might add a small newspaper cutscene documenting the backstory leading up to the game, the credit scene communicates enough without it I feel.
Another important milestone this week was testing my project on the monitor I intend to bring to the showcase. Luck seems to be on my side (outside of the aforementioned cold) because not only did the build of the game work on my monitor, it worked better than it did on my laptop screen. When Unity builds out a project resolution obviously plays a big role in how the game’s various assets will be placed in the world. The resolution of my laptop screen means that many of my UI elements are placed incorrectly in my builds and I worried this would hold true on my monitor. Surprisingly though, my monitor’s resolution is a perfect fit for Monkey See Monkey Doom and everything is placed on screen exactly where I intended thus making it the ideal play experience.
In the end my How to Play screen ended up having a lot more moving parts than I originally anticipated once I set my sights on having the tutorial tips be delivered via mall train. I came to this solution when trying to find an universe justification for moving tips, wanting to avoid thematically detached UI boxes and so I came up with the nearly iconic mall train. With a few reference images and a few new scripts I had a functioning train that could move backwards and forwards, each car offering up a new tip to playing the game.
Early today I debated removing this train set up in favor of a more typical scrolling text based solution feeling that my over the top approach might seem a bit ostentatious but after consulting a few people I decided to stick with it adding in some cool train sound effects and button sprites to go all the way with the idea.
Current State of the Game
Below are two short clips showing how the tutorial and main menu look on my monitor. Obviously the game looks better in person than it does in this video but I think this gives a good idea of the general feel my project will elicit on the day of the showcase.
Looking Ahead
The showcase is in 10 days and based on my scheduling predictions I figure I have about 5–6 more days of work to get the project ready for the show but if I have time remaining I will continue to work.
Remaining Goals:
- Have the game stop upon completing level goals with option to continue or return to level select.
- Playtest each level ensuring the goals are challenging but possible.
- Have an option for when the player runs out of special darts but has more orang boxes to destroy (lose? destroy with regular darts?)
- Change the player’s number based health to heart sprite based health
- Change the background of the actual game screen to better reflect the screen before it.
- Create the newspaper cutscene that points to the backstory of the game.
- Figure out why the quit button isn’t working.
My post next week will hopefully explain that I got all of this done efficiently with time to spare but that is pretty wishful thinking. Not all of these items are strictly necessary and some might be left out before the showcase comes around but I’ll try my best.
