Hello Again!

Results of Feedback!

Glad to see that I got a couple of responses to the feedback-form, these have been quite helpful in reaffirming some of my suspicions as to issues with Space Infiltrator.

Namely, that the scrolling was too slow. In the Unity Editor, the framerate was unlocked and was running quite high and therefore the scrolling (which is tied to the framerate (please don't hurt me)) was a good speed.

However, when I made a build and ran it on Itch.io I found that it was a lot slower. I imagine that being embedded in a browser is not good for frame-rate...

Regardless, the feedback I got did confirm this was an issue for at least 2 other people, so that was good to hear. Well, not "good" but useful.

What was also useful and not "good" was that one of the testers discovered that the End Zone I have at the end of the level didn't work as intended and just made the game hang instead. This wasn't an issue before I built the game, and then it was. I discovered the cause of the issue and I will have to make sure I test everything properly before forgetting I added them in the future.

(For those interested, I had implemented a script to restart the level if the player died. To do this I checked if the player was Destroyed. However, when the scene got reloaded in the End Zone, the player got Destroyed and therefore it changed the scene again, and then again, and again, etc. TL;DR: I caused an infinite loop at the end of the level...)

I also found that most of the game seemed to be OK as it is and there was mostly just a slight desire for more enemies and more speed. I intend to add more enemies in the future, and the speed will be faster now. I am particularly pleased to see that people enjoy the Black-and-White aesthetic of the game as I quite liked it.

Alpha 2

So apparently when I wrote that I would post an Alpha 1.0 devlog in my previous post, I was lying. I suppose I just forgot I said that, but it turns out that I never did it. The Past cannot see that which had not happened yet, so it could not have been helped I suppose. Irregardless, I am here to tell you about Alpha 2! (I dropped the '.0' as it looked silly.)

I have made the level faster. I have made player bullets s l o w e r. I have made a whole title screen. I even made a couple of chiptune tracks (Using Deflemask [3] for anybody interested.)
Basically, I have added more stuff to "polish" this little DEMO (That is what I'm calling it now).

Unfortunately for me, the contents of this DEMO is what I'm being assessed on, and so I am missing a fair amount of stuff from my concept statement. What is largely missing is the Creepypasta aspect of the game. The simple reason for that is that I didn't finish the actual game part of the game first. I also haven't made many of the real levels yet. I have the test level (level 0) and the first level of the outside area and that is about it. I also haven't made more than one enemy type, or more than one building type. I have made a nice Title Screen, and a High Score screen. I didn't finish implementing Hi-Scores; The scores are dynamic, I just haven't added the ability to save your score and add it to the table...

The reasons for most of these exclusions is simply that I ran out of time. I also probably gave myself too many things to work on, or too much scope. The core concept was fairly achievable, and I believe I achieved it (minus the creepypasta), but the number of levels and enemies and buildings was not met, and that is OK. I didn't expect to 100% finish my game before now. I have made a good DEMO that shows off the core gameplay of my game and I am happy with that. I made all of it by myself with some small help from my lecturers, and a little bit more help from the internet (mostly the Unity Scripting API. For the High Score stuff mostly reference [1]). I didn't even resort to using ChatGPT or GitHub CoPilot, or some other AI assistant.

This is all OK though, because I don't plan to abandon this game here. No, rather I intend to eventually finish it. Keyword: eventually. I don't know if I will be able to work on this in the future for another Uni Unit, but if I can't it will be finished slower (I have to study you know?)
It may be the case that I have to work on this in just my free time, which is fine as I quite like this project, it just means work will be slow. (Slower than I already was? Impossible!)

Asset List:

I am required to post an asset list, so here it is:

• I have several Scripts relating to destroying objects when a collision has occurred.
• I have a Player Prefab that contains all the necesary objects for the Player. This is the ship that the player uses to play the game.
• I have an Enemy Prefab. It stands still and shoots bullets that kill the Player.
• I have a Building Prefab. It sits still and waits to die.
• I have an EndZone prefab used for going to the next stage, restarting the level upon death, and playing the death sound.
• I have an Enemy Bullet, Player Bullet and a Bomb prefab. 
  • On the bullet/bomb there is a multi-purpose script used to destroy the bullet/bomb if it goes offscreen.
• I made the HUD a prefab. It contains the player's score and the dummy Hi-Score
• The High-Score Entry is a prefab so I could place multiple of them more easily.
• The Font used in the game is here too. [2]
• I have many scripts relating to the HighScore screen. These are used to hold the scores themselves, to update the text for the table, and do other High-Score related things.
• The Player Score has its own script which uses PlayerPrefs to store the score so it can persist between loads.
• I have three AudioClips 'GameOver', 'HighScore', and 'TitleTheme' that I wrote myself using Deflemask [3]. The Sound-chip used was the SN76489 from the SEGA Master System.
• I drew my own Stars for the Title Screen in Paint3D and animated them inside Unity. I also drew a title screen graphic that I didn't end using.
• There are a handful of unused scripts that I added from previous Unity Tutorials and the Pong Project. I added them at the beginning to help me create my own scripts and also just in case they were useful. I have not removed them as I may still need them in the future.
• There are a lot of scripts that wait for something to happen and then perform an action. Like the switching between the Title Screen and the High Score Table. These are often very simple scripts that just contain a public variable and a coroutine.
• I also have the Post Processing settings to create the Warped Screen and the CRT glow. There is also the Universal Render Pipeline object used to facilitate Post Processing.

I believe those are all the important or notable assets I have in my game. I made the game, and these are what I can think of, so if there are any more ones that deserved mentioning I will feel a little silly... (I guess I'll find out in my assignment feedback.)

User Guide:

SPACE INFILTRATOR is a game in which you must defeat enemy spaceships and destroy their buildings as you fight your way to the center of their planet to destroy them for good. These aliens are the enemies of Earth and it is your duty to remove their threat from your sector of the galaxy. The creatures of Planet Γε4 are no match for the might of the Terrarian Empire.

Controls:

     W/A/S/D - Movement (Up/Left/Down/Right)

     Space - FIRE (Shoots bullets that move horizontally)

     B - BOMB (Drops an arcing projectile useful for hitting buildings)

Gaining Score:

• Destroy Enemies to gain points. (Currently 200Pts. per enemy)

• Destroy Buildings to gain points. (Currently 100Pts. per building)

• Reach the End Zone to gain points. (Currently 1000Pts. per level)

References:

[1]

https://gamedevbeginner.com/how-to-keep-score-in-unity-with-loading-and-saving/#..
I derived the following scripts from the source above: 
(I wasn't able to get the HighScore feature working before the submission time, so these scripts go mostly unused aside from player score in-game and the dummy HighScore screen.)

• HighScores.cs
• HighScoreEntry.cs
• HighScoreDisplay.cs
• ScoreManager.cs
• XML_Manager.cs

[2]

https://www.fontspace.com/vector-battle-font-f3349
I used this Vector Graphics Font.

[3]

https://www.deflemask.com
I used this tracker to make the music in the game.