Monkey See Monkey Doom Weekly Reflection 9: Let’s Get Organized
Previous Week’s Work
At the end of my post last week I mentioned moving onto animating the enemy monkey and I kept my word, completing the monkey sprite sheets relatively early in the week. I originally modeled the monkey’s walk cycle after the same reference as the zookeeper’s but due to the monkey’s unique exaggerated proportions this walk looked robotic and bizarre and so I set out to create something a bit more animalistic. Without a reference I began playing around with the monkey’s movements and discovered a playful bounding motion that really gave the character a wild energy. A few more passes and I had a walk cycle I liked that I could flip and rearrange to have the character move in the opposite direction.
After the walk cycle was done I moved onto creating the damage and “death” animations for the character that the player would see when hitting a monkey with projectiles. The sleeping pose took a bit more time to get right than I anticipated but the final product gets the job done I’d say. One may notice a lack of forward and backward walk animations which is a direct result of how small the monkey character is within the game. While foreshortened perspective works for the zookeeper character who is a bit larger and slower, the monkey’s small frame demands large movements making a forward walk look muddled.
The next task I set out to conquer this week was that of finishing the level select screen. Taking a peek below reveals that this task remains unfinished as I find myself bested by the graphic design problems present in this scene of the game. I had the idea to make the layout of the levels resemble the maps you see on mall directories and while I like the actual map I’m not sure how well it conveys what I want. While I’d rather not remake the map (and right now I’m not sure what I should do differently) I feel that the map sprite itself will need to be worked on if not completely overhauled before the showcase.
Despite these shortcomings and setbacks I predict not everything on the page will need to be scrapped. Right now the map is functional: levels unlock upon completion of the previous, clicking on an open level reveals the level’s name, goal, and high score, and the player sprite moves to the active level. What this means is that aesthetically I may have a while to go but the programming done to make this page work (particularly the level unlocking system that uses a save file) will make the refactoring of this scene a breeze.
The final major addition this week to Monkey See Monkey Doom is the Survival Mode. Originally I pictured the survival mode as a sort of stretch goal for the project but considering the pace I am moving forward on the project I thought I would give it a shot. When a player starts the game all but the basic monkey will be locked in survival mode and can only be unlocked by completing the levels in which the unique enemy types are introduced. Players can select from any of the available hat types to enter the rotation in the survival mode with the true challenge being to turn on all hat types after unlocking them.
Work on the survival mode was both started and finished today and I am surprised with how well it functions and looks. This stretch goal gives the game a bit more structure with what you could consider an “end game” involving showing one’s skill at the game. I think I would like to give player’s the power to modify other rules in survive mode such as the amount of special bullets players have and the max number of boxes to destroy but once again those are stretch goals for once everything else is working how I want it to.
Current State of the Game
Monkey See Monkey Doom is starting to feel like a real game and while I am putting in more hours than I thought I ever would on a single project seeing this progress is satisfying. Below I will lay out how progression in the game actually works.
On first visit to the level select screen players will have one unlocked level. Completing this level (reaching the goal round specified ON the level select screen with the slowmo and fast monkeys will 1) unlock level 2 on the map & 2) unlock the slowmo and fast hats to be enabled in survival mode. This process is repeated until all 8 main levels are completed, meaning all 15 hats are unlocked for survival.
Looking Ahead
This next week I want to work on the main menu of the game and finally conquer the level select screen. If I can get these done in a week I want to modify the sound effects and add a few new UI animations to the game after unifying the buttons and text within the menu scenes of the game. Once these things are done I will be about 85% done with the game putting me on track to safely finish by the 27th with at least a little time to spare.
