Reflex – Dev Diary 44

The final batch of UI updates took place this week.

After my play tester had another quick play through I needed to adjust a few of the text details for the UI on phones. The line spacing needed to be tweaked down a little (1 pixel) and the mission title font was switched to the heading font instead of the large font. This was actually to ensure consistency with the other headings used on the UI panels.

One pretty big change with the UI was the number of levels displayed at the same time on the level select screen. Previously this was 5 but because that was too tight for smaller screens I’ve altered it to 3. The problem is that 3 doesn’t go into 25 so I made the decision to remove 1 level from each world making them have 24 levels each instead.

The last game play change this week was to do with the missile holder tiles. Previously they would hold onto any number of missiles and then either the player could release them when ready or they would be released after a certain amount of time. The problem I could see here is if the holder is holding onto 2 or 3+ missiles that are all heading in the same direction. When they are released they would appear as one missile (3 perfectly on top of each other). So I’ve altered the holder so that the currently held missile is let go if another missile enters the tile. Should be interesting to see how this affects gameplay.

And finally 2 new levels (5.15 and 5.16) have been added to the game. These maps are I believe the largest bases so far. 8 levels left to go!