This is a post I made to the Zinnia Games Blog: https://zinniagames.com/the-friday-tiding-7-thirty-three-percent/

The Friday Tiding #7: Thirty Three Percent

15 Nov, 2024

I've now reached the point where these Friday Tidings are developing into a habit. Even if I don't make a reminder for myself to post one, my mind makes sure I know about it. A lot of Ms in that sentence.

Anyways I've got another decent chunk of progress to report.

Leveling Up

Crystal Level is now complete. A full layout from start to end that can be played through. With the completion of this level two of the six levels in Demo 2 are now complete.

I still have a ways to go, but the next level I'll be working on shouldn't take a long time. My next target is one of the Medium difficulty levels, known as What's Popping. This level's gimmicks are floating bubbles and balloons that pop after the player interacts with them in some way. For the bubbles, they act as platforms that disappear after the player leaves them. Balloons meanwhile will pop the moment the player touches them, giving a large height boost.

I've shown off the gimmicks to this level already, but until now the layout has been nothing but the starting area. Hoping that this level doesn't end up taking more than a few hours to put together

Heads Up Displaying

The other main work I did for this week was once again messing with the HUD. I added a proper font for the HUD instead of using Godot's default font, which you can see in the screenshots above. I also finally added a visual display for when the player has collected a Fragment in a level.

I haven't actually talked about the Fragments as of yet. In each level there is a special collectible known as a Fragment. While they don't do anything in the current Demos, in the final game collecting the Fragments in each level will allow the player to access a bonus world. I'm won't give any details on the bonus world yet, but it will be worth the effort to get into.

These fragments also tie into the backstory of the game. I'm not gonna spoil what exactly they are, but let's just say the answer has some interesting implications for both the main character and the villain.

While I have bigger plans for the game's UI and will be remaking the HUD in the future, this one is more than adequate for Demo 2.

That's about all the relevant stuff that I worked on for this week. I'm planning on doing some backend code refactoring for this next week, but I likely won't be getting too deep into that as it will be really boring. As always, see you next week.