Reflex – Dev Diary 6

Lots of tweaks and additions this week. Tutorials that are displayed before playing the active level can now be device dependant. This is a change I made when a friend of mine was playing an early build on my Android tablet and he seemed confused when the instructions for panning the screen starts mentioning the mouse and keyboard (before touch instructions). So now the Android version only mentions touch controls.

There was an interesting bug that I didn’t catch on my previous playthroughs. If you go from level 1.1 to 1.2 straight away the level objectives text would still show the information for 1.1, and likewise for 1.2 to 1.3, etc. This wasn’t caught because I usually just test one level then quit the game to tweak.

Levels 1.2 – 1.4 are now in the game and I’ve made a start on 1.5. Each level introduces 1 or 2 new board pieces to help ease the player into the complicated levels that are to come. The initial ‘training’ levels will not introduce all the game pieces though as it wouldn’t make sense for the hero of the story to know all of the enemies technology. Things like laser fences and portals will be introduced later on.

The pause screen has been completed. From here the player can restart the current level, return to the level select, or exit to the main titles. The pause screen doesn’t show the game board to make sure it cannot be used as a timer cheat. I know you were thinking it.

The launchpad sprite has been replaced with a new cleaner version – just a minor thing but it makes all the difference.

One major change has been the complete replacement of the generator objective model. I wasn’t happy with how it looked compared to the rest of the game and it needed to go. The new reactor is based on a 3d render of a sci-fi generator model I have. It’s a modular model so I will be making variants of the sprite for future use.

And, there’s been a load more sound effects added to the game.