Jason Tuyen Games - The Ball Progress Log 2 (Part 1)

The Ball Progress Log 2 (Part 1)

Sep 28, 2015. | By: xanjos

It’s been a while (around 2-3 months to be exact) since I’ve posted something regarding the progress of my little indie game The Ball so I thought I might write up another development log detailing what I have done so far since then (Unless you happen to be one of the few people who regularly read/stalk my Twitter page by which in this case you probably know what I’ve done already :V). Since this progress log is going to be fairly big, I’ve decided to split it into two parts (this right here is part 1) to make it easier to read with the second part coming out later this week (Edit: Part 2 is now available to read here!!).

One of the changes I made to the game since the last development log I posted was to the game’s UI panels and slider bars. Instead of the generic white and grey that comes by default when building these UI elements in Unity, I’ve now replaced those with colour versions (In fact, I used the same textures that I made for the UI buttons for this).

I also created a small pop up utility object to use as a placeholder for features I have planned but not finished yet (although at the moment, there isn’t any feature in the game that is yet to be implemented).

Working on a quick popup utility object to use in my #indiedev game as a placeholder for stuff I haven't done yet :V pic.twitter.com/w3TQ5iBOfj
— Jason Tuyen (@xanjos) July 22, 2015

For the instructions screen, I decided to split the single wall of text into smaller, more manageable sections (to make it easier to read and understand) and also made the screen scrollable using a ScrollRect and Mask solution.

It's #IndieDevHour and I'm gonna eat soon but just got the scrolling for my new instructions screen done #gamedev pic.twitter.com/K2jd7wT58a
— Jason Tuyen (@xanjos) July 22, 2015

I also made the wall of text in the credits screen scrollable so I would have more space to credit people without worrying about the text shrinking.

Made the credits in my #indiedev game scrollable as well i.e. more space to credit everyone #gamedev #madewithunity pic.twitter.com/8tyXZOXIxi
— Jason Tuyen (@xanjos) July 23, 2015

In the options screen, I created a feedback button for players to use to submit bug reports

Did a feedback button for my #indiedev game - that shows a popup saying it's not done yet :'D #gamedev #madewithunity pic.twitter.com/RxxpNi8oNM
— Jason Tuyen (@xanjos) July 22, 2015

Since then however, the feedback button now actually points to a bug report form.

In order to add some more responsiveness to the UI buttons, I decided to add some click sounds to the game. To improve things even further, I even added some simple animations to the UI panels.

Decided to snazz up my little #indiedev game by making a spinning animation for my UI panels. #gamedev #madewithunity pic.twitter.com/WN0iuPQ3VE
— Jason Tuyen (@xanjos) July 27, 2015

You may remember from the last development log that I was showing off a quick coin design I did myself in Inkscape to possibly use for the game. In the end, I did eventually use them in the game as randomly spawning items the player can pick up for extra points (like pretty much every other video game out there that has collectable coins of some sort to pick up) although in the future, I may use the coins as some sort of currency for a possible upgrade/power up system in the game.

Entire logic's not finished yet but testing out how coins would work in my #indiedev game. #gamedev #madewithunity pic.twitter.com/DySz0RlPQs
— Jason Tuyen (@xanjos) July 23, 2015

More detailed gameplay preview of the coins in my #indiedev game #gamedev #madewithunity pic.twitter.com/RkzqiLzXvA
— Jason Tuyen (@xanjos) July 24, 2015

To make the coins stand out a bit more, I implemented an quick algorithm to control the number of coins that randomly spawn in the game using a random number generator and even added a simple spinning animation to the coins themselves.

Playing around with the coin spawning patterns in my #indiedev game. #gamedev #madewithunity pic.twitter.com/d7Ey7SszU5
— Jason Tuyen (@xanjos) July 26, 2015

And now I've gone and added a simple spinning animation to my coins. #gamedev #indiedev #madewithunity pic.twitter.com/qVflE1LVML
— Jason Tuyen (@xanjos) July 26, 2015

I also tested my game on various device form factors (namely an old Xperia Play phone running Android 2.3, a HP Slate 10 HD tablet running Android 4.2 and my brother’s Samsung Galaxy Note 4 running Android 5.0) to see how they would look. Apart from a few rendering issues on some devices (more on this later on in part 2), the game look and ran pretty well on all the devices I tested it on without any loss of performance.

Testing out how my #indiedev game looks on various device form factors. #gamedev #madewithunity pic.twitter.com/OjDuhtxlfS
— Jason Tuyen (@xanjos) July 25, 2015

I hope you’ve all enjoyed reading the first part of this progress log and please stay tuned for part 2!!

Jason/Xanjos

Edit: Part 2 is now available to view right here!!