Creating a level manager, kinda…

Once again, I’m Guy Dimor from team Wendigo, and today I’ll write about how I created a maybe-sorta-kinda-not really level manager.

Before the beta playtests, there were some things still missing from our game, not the least of which being an actual series of levels. Instead we had a randomly generated endless mode, which didn’t have much replayability and did not have any progression. We knew this would pose a problem with the playtesters, as this was no longer alpha and we needed a way to keep them playing.

This resulted in me spending the better half of a weekend crunching code until my brain dripped out of my ears. My issue was my lack of knowledge when it comes to programming sequences of events, as all I’ve done up to that point was make loops that generate random enemies. Then I had an idea: Still have the levels be randomly generated, but have a series of them that progresses in difficulty, differentiated by an integer that keeps track of the levels. In addition, the circle of light around the player would slowly shrink over the course of the game, eventually lighting only the player.

This wasn’t enough, however. I wanted to add some cinematics (kind of) to add to the atmosphere of the game. The goal was to have the levels be seperated by a short scene each time, in which a giant shadow swims below the player and growls menacingly, growing in size, darkness and volume each time, serving to foreshadow the eponymous Umibozu. The group already discussed the idea beforehand so we already had the right sound effects for the job. I used one of the existing shadow sprites as a placeholder (later one of the artists made an original shadow just for this) and wrote coroutines for each scene. My personal goal was to spook the player while also piquing their curiousity to keep playing.

Finally, I decided to add a tutorial to help familiarize the player with all the mechanics of the game, as it could be daunting to take them in all at once. I did a few playtests to make sure everything was working properly and then I built the game for the beta playtests.

 

-Guy Dimor