Update: Fundamental Polish

Featuring new fish art, pause menu, and high score table

This update strongly focuses on more fundamental elements found in may video games. I will explain the details below:

New Fish Art

I received feedback from some that the fish art looks unappealing, which is to be expected. Because I have not put the game into full production yet, I decided to quickly make art that fits within constraints. Below are the following fish art:

1. Player 1 represents an asagi Koi, a breed for its silverly blue top in addition to the orange and white body.
2. Player 2 represents a red-tailed catfish, which the actual photos depict it as murky green skin with red accent, but that accent is not quite noticeable unless looking close at the sprite.
3. The opponents, coming in monotone yellow, red, and blue, are based on the tiger fish with sharp teeth, and some of them have horizontal stripes, which I used to differentiate between players and opponents.

While I do like what I made so far, I feel that the proportions of the body are a bit too fatty and small compared to the actual photos of the fish on sideways profile, and also believe that maybe increase in width and height may help balance out the tail blade size issue as well.

Pause Menu

Finally, a pause screen that actually works!

While video games everywhere and today have a pause menu, it takes some effort to get one working properly. I implemented a pause screen by treating it as an additive scene using Unity.  I used the following link below to help me get the pause feature working:

https://gamedevbeginner.com/the-right-way-to-pause-the-game-in-unity

Because it is a small prototype, it felt very easy to implement the solution to ensure that all active entities stop moving and that they do not compute anything ahead of time. While I successfully implemented actions for "Resume Game" and "Exit Game", I have not yet implemented anything for "Write Feedback" since I plan to use a free Trello Unity plugin that makes feedback writing and bug detection easy to submit for end users.

High Score Board

High Scores Table is another aspect seen in many games, and it stems from the arcade video games. The way I implemented the leaderboard is to display a list of scores that players can submit when reaching the high scores. Because it is a simultaneous play, I had to make sure to not only include player entries, but also detect them into their proper place. Additionally, the name submission is entirely handled by the joystick by changing characters up and down, and then moving index left and right like many arcade video games.

Also. I found this tutorial helpful for further development:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAbaqGYdnyI

What's next?

Now that I got some of the fundamentals implemented, I want to implement more things that help make the game stand out:

• Local Avoidance on tail blades and spiky urchins for opponent fish
• Implement "Write feedback" action with Trello integration
• Polish up more on sounds and art
• Adjust the size of the fish for better proportions
• Implement a wave manager, consisting of opponent order and map layout
• Improve the user interface and showcase controls
• Possible dual play option on standard gamepad, P1 on left stick, P2 on right stick
• Maybe allow 4 player support