Weekly Sprint 8: Bug Exterminator

This week was mainly taken up by the recording and fixing of the bugs that I found in my game. Last week, the pause feature of the game was not working for both the main game and the mini-game. Thankfully, I have fixed the pause feature and it is working well for both parts. Here is the rest of my progress:

Mini-game progress

• I made the garbage pieces of of the mini-game. As of this moment, I have a soda can, a fish skeleton, and a banana peel. For next week, I would like to have the main character sprite finished and implemented in the game.

trash for mini-game

Main Level Progress

• I developed a main menu for the game that now incorporates my logo.

main menu

• I also finalized the facts that are shown before starting each game. It now displays a random fact (out of a pool of 6 facts) before starting the game.
• I added an interaction for when the character reaches the exit sign, but I need to revisit the text that is displayed for when the game is over.

exit sign

• I added a ladder interaction in which the panda can now climb up and down the ladders throughout the game.

User Guide Progress

• I have finished all of the content for the user guide. For next week, I need to finalize spacing, fonts, and fine tune the guide for the showcase.

Remaining Bugs

• I still need to fix when the character reaches the end of the game. I would like to have a screen that tells the user the final score and ask if they would like to play again. As of right now, when the user gets to the exit sign, the screen goes black with no additional instruction.
• Another bug is when the panda character and snake collide from the right-hand side (of the snake). When this happens, the character loses all lives and is shot quickly over to the left-hand side (again, of the snake). As a result, the player loses and the game is over. I would like to change this feature so that the objects quickly collide and bounce off of each other quickly.
• Wall jumps — the panda is currently still able to walk up the walls of the game in a feature that the class has named ‘spider panda.’ While I might still consider this a bug, the user tests said that they enjoyed that aspect of the game, so I may keep it in the end.
• The spikes currently decrease the score by 1 without a limit on how low the score can go. I received feedback that the score should not go below 0, as a score of -100 is demoralizing and makes the player lose interest. I agree with this critique and will implement this change over the next week as well.

User Testing

Today I have performed three user tests and received great feedback about my game and user guide. Some of the feedback that I will take into account over the next three weeks:

• Animate the water and the coins.
• Get more points for killing enemies.
• Allow users to use arrow keys and WASD keys to move.
• Make the enemies change direction.
• Make the camera follow the character a little more, it gets hard to see where to jump underneath the character while in mid-air.
• Have a leader board at the showcase to make the game more competitive.
• There weren’t really any suggestions for the mini-game.

Only twenty-three days left!!!