Jul 24, 2016
by Andy Sheehan
Been working on some level planning tools and refining the UI for From The Sun.
My initial toolset was an editor that placed each obstacle individually. This grew tedious quickly and I started setting up groups of spawns as waves and a couple of basic types of waves to generate programmatically. My favorite of those types was one that divided the screen by fifths, picked a random ordering for each of those subdivisions to get a waves, then use the same ordering to place five pieces of debris within the subdivision. I liked it because it created a good spread that hit every point on the screen but wasn't too hard to avoid, plus the first wave of debris describes where the rest of the waves will be on the screen. Those are still in use in the sample level, but there are some new types that I'm generating as well.
In addition to the generative waves I added some new tools to create groups of debris using splines. Following the Cat Like Coding spline tutorial I was able to learn a lot more about custom editor tools to help me lay out paths of debris. Next up will be composite debris that consists of multiple types of debris as a single physical object. That will allow for some interesting debris to navigate that rotates as a unit.
The UI has a new side bar layout that uses its background as a quick color indicator, plus easier to read score, and a less distracting ammo icon. There's also a tutorial that helps describe the mechanics of color changing and gathering ammo.
One big task that I have't even started approaching is audio. I should find some creative commons music and sound effects to use, at least for now.
Play and comment please!