Progress Report #4
This week I worked on a variety of stuff around the game, but still managed to make some nice improvements and bug fixes. I worked with the concept artists, migrated the website to a new web host, worked on setting up an email newsletter (still not done), and even managed to work on the actual game!
Stats are now recorded as you play the game. I think I'll use these stats for some of the achievements or other rewards once the game is further along, but for now they're just for fun. I eventually want to add a "flip counter", but I haven't figured out how to properly track what a "flip" is. I'm sure I'll get to it eventually, but for now the simple things are being tracked quite nicely.
This week's top bug is UI related. Because PogoChamp is a controller-centric, I need a way to show users which UI/menu elements they're interacting with. I decided to use a kind of targeting reticle as seen below:
The selection reticle works by placing its center at the center of the currently selected UI element. This worked well until I added the stats screen. While working on that screen I noticed that the selection reticle was slightly misplaced on the Close button. This was confusing, because it worked perfectly for all the other buttons in the main menu, options menu, and replay list. After some digging, I noticed that the misplacement varied depending on the game's resolution:
It turns out the close button in the stats menu was the first button that was anchored to the left side. All the other buttons were anchored to their center point. I had been calculating the center point using:
It turns out that targetTransform.rect.center doesn't scale when screen size changes. The solution, ended up being relatively straight forward: just manually calculate the center offset of the rect, using the current screen size
As mentioned in Progress Report #3, I've started working with a few different artists, with the goal of creating some concept art for PogoChamp. These initial pieces of art will be used as the reference for creating the actual in-game art and music, so getting it "right" is pretty important. Working with the artists has been great so far, but I don't have anything to share with you all yet.
The Steam Game Festival is a week-long event where unreleased games all share demos at the same time. It's an exciting event, and during the previous Game Festival I played some pretty interesting stuff. The last Game Festival featured 900 games, which is way too many, so Valve decided that games can only be in one of the next three Game Festivals. Because PogoChamp won't have updated artwork by the time the event starts on October 7, I decided to hold off on submitting it until the next Game Festival (likely some time in February).
Leave a comment below or join the Discord to let me know what you'd like to hear about in the next progress report!
Stats Recording
Stats are now recorded as you play the game. I think I'll use these stats for some of the achievements or other rewards once the game is further along, but for now they're just for fun. I eventually want to add a "flip counter", but I haven't figured out how to properly track what a "flip" is. I'm sure I'll get to it eventually, but for now the simple things are being tracked quite nicely.
Bug of the Week
This week's top bug is UI related. Because PogoChamp is a controller-centric, I need a way to show users which UI/menu elements they're interacting with. I decided to use a kind of targeting reticle as seen below:
The selection reticle works by placing its center at the center of the currently selected UI element. This worked well until I added the stats screen. While working on that screen I noticed that the selection reticle was slightly misplaced on the Close button. This was confusing, because it worked perfectly for all the other buttons in the main menu, options menu, and replay list. After some digging, I noticed that the misplacement varied depending on the game's resolution:
It turns out the close button in the stats menu was the first button that was anchored to the left side. All the other buttons were anchored to their center point. I had been calculating the center point using:
Vector2 buttonPosition = RectTransformUtility.WorldToScreenPoint(null, targetTransform.position);
reticle.position = buttonPosition + targetTransform.rect.center;
It turns out that targetTransform.rect.center doesn't scale when screen size changes. The solution, ended up being relatively straight forward: just manually calculate the center offset of the rect, using the current screen size
Vector2 buttonPosition = RectTransformUtility.WorldToScreenPoint(null, targetRectTransform.position);
CanvasScaler scaler = targetRectTransform.GetComponentInParent();
Vector2 reference = scaler.referenceResolution;
float widthMult = Screen.width / reference.x;
float heightMult = Screen.height / reference.y;
Vector2 offset = targetRectTransform.rect.center * new Vector2(widthMult, heightMult);
reticle.position = buttonPosition + offset;
Art Update
As mentioned in Progress Report #3, I've started working with a few different artists, with the goal of creating some concept art for PogoChamp. These initial pieces of art will be used as the reference for creating the actual in-game art and music, so getting it "right" is pretty important. Working with the artists has been great so far, but I don't have anything to share with you all yet.
Skipping the Steam Game Festival: Autumn
The Steam Game Festival is a week-long event where unreleased games all share demos at the same time. It's an exciting event, and during the previous Game Festival I played some pretty interesting stuff. The last Game Festival featured 900 games, which is way too many, so Valve decided that games can only be in one of the next three Game Festivals. Because PogoChamp won't have updated artwork by the time the event starts on October 7, I decided to hold off on submitting it until the next Game Festival (likely some time in February).
Changelog
- Finished the first version of stats recording. Records things like air time/distance traveled, but is missing fun stuff like number of flips.
- Added the first version of the stats menu UI.
- Update stats menu number display to use hours, minutes and kilometers where appropriate.
- Fixed issue where GUI selection indicator would be in wrong position at certain resolutions.
- Fixed bug where a second instanced of the level state manager singleton would be created when reloading levels.
- Replay Mode: Added replay ghost toggling.
- Replay Mode: Changed the UI toggle to be simpler, it now toggles the entire UI, instead of one section at a time.
- Replay Mode: The "stationary" camera can now be moved, it has been renamed to "fixed" camera.
- Replay Mode: The camera now properly maintains its orientation when switching between camera modes.
- Replay Mode: Update the camera deadzone to be more consistent.
- Fixed selection reticle not animating when the game is paused.
Leave a comment below or join the Discord to let me know what you'd like to hear about in the next progress report!
