Playground Panic #5 – Aesthetic Stuff

Programming vs. designing. Up until recently we barely had anything that showed that the kids weren’t actually “killed off”, but rather cleaned. We have been really rushed with getting an actual “game” done and haven’t had as much time as we’d like left to spend on the fine-tuning, balancing and aesthetic feelings of the game. We don’t have much, but water-effects, UI, dirt and so on are things we either have added already or plan to add in a near future, all to keep our aesthetic goals legit and to keep the game on the happy side of genres (blood comes in DLC with packaged minigun, $5.99, release date TBA).

One of the things we had to add was how enemy defeats were handled. Before this update, kids were simply removed once they weren’t dirty anymore, implying that they were simply disposed of. Now, they instead walk towards one of two different locations on the map depending on their situation:
1. The house
2. The street to get picked up by their parents
Once there, they will simply despawn. Here’s a quick GIF to show how it works (early version, but you get the idea):

Step 1: Check if the dirt-level (HP) of the enemy is zero, aka. clean.
Step 2: Change the target the enemy is aiming at.
Step 3: Change the speed of the kid so it won’t be in the way.
Step 4: Set the alpha of the UI related to the kid to 0 (arrows and the ball, it works easier for us to keep the UI in its vector when checking other things until later).
Step 5: Display the cleanness of the kid using a simple sprite animation overlay (e.g. sparkles).
Step 6: Check if there are any other “important” kids (where they need to be clean before their parents come soon). If yes, continue to the next step. If no, the level (day) is cleared and you go to the upgrade screen.
Step 7: Despawn the enemy if it is within a certain distance of the house/street.
Step 8: Have a lovely day.

It’s a pretty simple system overall, but it requires a lot of small little checks in the code. The difference it makes to the feel of the game is really big though, as it goes from your average “kill everything that moves” to a Shoot ‘em Up with a twist (aesthetically at least).

This post was pretty rushed, so I’m sorry to whoever got to comment on this, we’re busy with getting something out for the beta.