LAST SIGNAL – H.A.C.
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In order to relay information to the player we needed a way to give the player the right information needed at the right time. To do this we created the Handheld Artificial Companion, or H.A.C. for short. This allows us to relay information in the games universe without breaking the immersion that we want to achieve. The name comes from the narrative created by our level designer while he was designing the levels for the game.
The H.A.C. displays the text in a window that is located in the screens lower right corner and can be closed and opened by pressing the L key. The L key was chosen for this function since it is often used in other games as the key representing the players log. The H.A.C. reads the text that it is going to display from a text file that is given to it from the start of the game and is not part of the room system that I have described in earlier posts, but it will be in future revisions. It starts by reading a number that represents the number of lines that is going to be read. This is to make sure that the game can read the empty lines so that we can create some space between the lines, making the text more readable. After that it reads the lines of text from the file and finishes with a final line that is the filename for the next file that is going to be read when an event is triggered in the game that necessitates the H.A.C. to show the next piece of text. When the player starts the game on the first level, the H.A.C. will go through a “calibration test” in order to teach the player the controls and give the player a chance to familiarize themselves with the controls. When the player completes the steps presented to them, the H.A.C. will update whenever the player has completed an objective and display the next objective, guiding the player through the game. As we are closing in on the end of this project we are testing various elements of the game and for the H.A.C. this means what font to use and what size of the font to use. What exactly is going to be written in the text files for the H.A.C. to display, and when they are going to be displayed. For now we have a solid ground to work from, but it can definitely be improved on.  |
