Weekly Development Progress Report, 24/04/17

Well tl:dr - much better than last week. Which is strange really as in terms of hours I didn't really do much more than the previous week, however this time that was by choice as opposed to forced on me by illness (it was still school holidays so I took a little time off to enjoy it with my family) and that made a big difference. The hours that I did spend working felt much more productive, and we had plenty of sunshine which always helps.

Placeholders Re-visited

I've added extra sound effects and replaced most of the placeholder SFX and the game is sounding much better now, the effects I've found fit well with the humourous style I'm going for and help bring the game to life (I also spent time making all the characters blink, which makes me laugh much more than it should). There's still a bit of work to do as it can sound a little cluttered when there's a lot going on, and I need to add a music track, but overall I'm happy with my progress on this.

I spent far too long coming up with 'clever' titles for the medals, I'm sure you'll agree they're very punny (sorry)

I've also reworked the placeholder assets for medals/achievements, this is still a work in progress but looking better than last week. I've got a small issue with triggering rewards when more than one milestone is passed but hopefully I can sort that with a bit more testing.

Obstacles - not a problem

This is a crate that you click on to destroy, hence the sign. Don't click the sign though, it's not clickable.

Perhaps the biggest change this week was the addition of obstacles that the player needs to click to destroy before they block the zombies progress (zombies decompose pretty quickly outside the lab, as you're probably aware). I think this is the final gameplay element the project needed, previously I felt as a player I spent too much time watching and waiting but now it feels much more involved. Most of the gameplay work from now on will hopefully be small balancing tweaks.

Finally, over the weekend I started coding the tutorial, it's probably at least 80% done now but needs user testing. The gameplay and controls are pretty simple so I should be able to keep the tutorial pretty light.

As anyone who's ever cleaned a cannon will tell you, ripe zombies are not a good ammunition choice. 

The main to-do list items I've yet to start are the menu screen and some sort of save functionality. I may also add some sort of intro/story scene but I don't want to get bogged down so this might not make the cut.