Weekly Sprint 9: Plateau

This week was not a productive as the past few weeks have been. It was one of those times that my other classes had to take precedence (even though I’d rather be working on thesis!). However, I was able to finish up a few other things.

One of the biggest things that was successful was the game over message when the player hits the water. Previously, when the user hits the water, it would just fall through and there wouldn’t be any notification that the game was over. Now, when the player hits the water, a message appears showing that the game is over, the score, and asks if they would like to play again.

The second biggest task that I completed was the fine-tuning of the user guide. Finally, the user guide is completely done, and I have no plans to change anything else on it! I took some of the suggestions of the class, such as changing the position of the title, the spacing, etc. and I am very happy with how it has turned out.

Overall, there are just a few other things that I need to fix before the big day, and I am definitely prioritizing. The biggest things that I need to fix are:

• The score should not decrease below zero.
• The player should recoil from the right side of the enemy (not just the left).
• The player should jump horizontally from the wall, rather than just vertically. (Although, I am playing with the idea of keeping this feature, as it was very popular during user testing that the panda bear became a ‘spider panda’).
• The enemies should change direction after hitting a wall.
• I need to create the robot sprite for the mini-game.

After finishing all of that, I will be virtually done! I am hoping for some extra time to implement some ‘reach goals.’ These would be checkpoints throughout the main level so that if the user reaches a far enough point that they do not have to start from the beginning. I would also like to implement a few more background features such as clouds and trees to add to the background setting of the game. And finally, it was recommended that I should animate the water and the coins in the game. Hopefully I will have enough time to implement these features!

Only sixteen days left!! Woohoo!