Cannot Kill the Battery!

This week I’ve been working on a “battery”-mechanic for our group’s (Bugbear!) game “Umibōzu”. Until now, the player has been able to use the floodlights at will, which unbalances the game by making it possible to “spam” the floodlight, rendering powerups and other mechanics trivial. This is also a problem because it contradicts our aesthetic goal of “mystery”. To rectify, we decided that it is time to implement a “battery”-mechanic which shows a meter or similar, giving visual feedback, so the player can manage their use of the floodlight accordingly.

The floodlight, as shown in the image below, is activated at user-input and for the duration the key is held down while rotating counter-clockwise. This can be done whenever the player wants to, revealing incoming potential enemies and powerup-crates.

As previously mentioned, this reduces the overall player experience by making other mechanics redundant, as shown by our recent playtest too which made it clear that the balancing was off.

To implement the new battery-mechanic the floodlight’s activation will be dependent on a single variable that tracks the current battery level like so:

The battery, or “lightlevel” in the code, is restored by gathering powerups, making it possible to use the floodlight again.

With this, the basic functionality is in place, but a UI element still had to be created to display the current battery level.
Our artists had already created some placeholders that could be used, so I created a UI element with 5 “Light”-children that will turn on/off depending on the current battery-level from above.

Additionally, sounds will also be used to inform the player of the current battery-level, in accordance with Ernest Adam’s UI-design suggestions for creating a player-centric UI as found in his book “Fundamentals of Game Design”.

Finally, the battery-UI on the game-screen looks like the following:

The lights will turn off when the battery reaches 80%, 60%, 40%, 20% and 0% starting with the rightmost light. Some code to illustrate:

Hopefully with this mechanic in place, we have retained some of the “mystery” aesthetic that will facilitate a better player experience.

– Jeppe Willatzen

Please find my comment for the 2nd blogpost below:
URL: https://hangningdevourer.wordpress.com/2018/02/15/level-generator/

About Jeppe Willatzen

2017 Programming

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