"Final Exam" Game Devlog

Hi!

I'm finally getting close to starting the new version of the demo. I've finished creating all sections of the main menu. Of course, there will be small changes in the final version of the game. In particular, as I've said many times before, all AI generated background images will be replaced with the original ones. There is also a possibility that the control elements will be slightly modified. But in general, the overall look of the main menu and its sections will be as it is now.

I'm a bit stumped on gamepad customization, more specifically on the display of gamepad button names. If for the keyboard I created an array where the index of each key corresponds to its symbol, I can't do it for the gamepad. The thing is that gamepads from different brands have different indexes of buttons, and I can't standardize it. I tested the game on three gamepads, and none of the gamepads had the same button indexes. That being the case, it's impossible to know what a particular button on a particular gamepad is responsible for.

So, I decided to keep it simple. In the gamepad settings menu, I didn't write the names of the installed buttons, but left their indexes. And for the player to be able to identify the index of each button of the gamepad, I introduced a gamepad testing section. In fact, the game could have done without this section of the menu. But I decided to do it this way. In the final version it will be seen whether to leave this section or not.

The second thing I did was to create a display of lives, health and points on the game location screen. Earlier I had already had problems with displaying text and numeric information. But I was able to solve this problem by creating a sprite font.

Finally, this week I changed the image set for the main character. I've already mentioned that I decided to give up pixel graphics. I originally wanted to use sprites created in a special character editor. I thought it would speed up the development process. However, I was not satisfied with the character created in the editor. Too much would have to be reworked for the character's animation to be of proper quality. So, I decided to redraw the character myself, taking the previous pixel images as a basis.

The result will be published very soon. Right now the build is available for testing on Patreon and Boosty.

I wanted to add temporary sounds and music this week, as I think it's enough for the test build to be soundless. But, despite the fact that now I'm spending much more time on game development than before - I haven't had time to work on the sounds and music. Well, hopefully, next week I'll bring what I've planned to the end.