I have been working on a little train game - SuperConductor and it's at a point where I'm really super with how it is playing + looking
The goal of the same is to change the train track switches and collect coins. I think that I'll end up having a set number of coins to collect, with the game keeping track of how long it takes you to to collect them all - it is loosely based on a minigame in an old C64 Donald Duck game that I used to love as a kid
I'm most proud of how easy it is for me to create new levels - each level is just a txt file with different characters representing straights / corners / switches etc. It makes it really easy to iterate levels and test them quick
There's still quite a lot on my TODO list, but I'm really enjoying the PlayDate dev environment
One thing I was quite surprised with was how rough my tiles looked when I rotated them in code - it wasn't a big deal to just create separate images for the different rotations and flips, but I didn't expect that I would need to
So I'm not particularly good at "under pressure" type of games, and I'm not even sure if this is appropriate to volunteer, but if you need any help testing at any point, feel free to hit me up. And if I shouldn't have brought it up, just ignore that
Thanks to RustySabre for his time and excellent playtesting feedback, I have made some great improvements to Super Conductor in the last week
I implemented saving the state on exit, and reloading when you load the game up again. I had resisted doing this earlier because I envisioned my game as kind of a quick hit type of thing, but RustySabre was 100% correct that it needed it
I updated the logic of when new coins spawn, to avoid the occasional issue of coins spawning right in front of the train
I also implemented some "how to play" text when the menu is displayed, and some smoke when you speed up the train (a very low priority feature, but it makes me smile)
Now that the game saves and reloads its state, I feel like I should maybe double the number of levels, to add more replay-ability
The game has been accepted to be a catalog game, so a big decision remaining which I'm not sure about is how to the current high score table (which is a series of times) to a list of points
I got my catalog release date today (13th of August), so have a deadline to get the game complete
I had an idea at 4am this morning that I should scramble the order of the levels (after the first few introductory levels), to make multiple playthroughs less predictable
With that in place, I just need to create a bunch more levels. There are currently 50 coins to collect over 15 levels, so I'll aim for another 15-ish levels to bring it up to 100 coins. I'm very strict about moving the player on to the next level after 2 to 4 coins to avoid level fatigue, so don't know the exact number that I'll need yet
The process for creating these start with sketches on paper like this...
I completed all of the levels that I needed to create, and spent the morning yesterday drawing up the graphics for the Catalog store, so I think that the only thing left to do is implementing high score tables
Because the games "high scores" are actually just the lowest times that someone has completed the game in, I was imagining that I was going to have to do something like converting a low time into a high score, until I actually read the documentation and found that I can have a high score table which orders by the lowest number first
After a bit of mucking around with the high score API (which I think uncovered an unknown bug at Panic's end), I have the high score table up and running
I also updated the home screen to clean it up a bit and to give the option to view the fastest times or start a new game
I also added some "how to play" text on the pause screen. I feel like it's straightforward enough that I don't need a full on tutorial
All I really need to do now are choosing the screenshots/gifs for the store page, and sending a final file to Panic
EDIT: I also drew much nicer sprites for when coins are collected, instead of just scaling up the regular sized coin
