CAGD 377 Sprint 6

At the start of Sprint 6, I made a list of the three most important tasks that needed to be done for the game to be ready: getting the aspect ratio nailed down, getting items implemented, and getting the art assets in the game.

So my first exploit was getting the UI scaling to work. The task was pretty easy, but required a search for what to do. I set Unity to the Samsung phone simulator and reorganized the UI, scaling everything appropriately and making room for the art assets to be included. After some tinkering with the camera, I got the scale to change properly, and did some testing.

With the UI scaling locked in, I moved to finishing up items. While I had done some work with items in the main scene, and our lead had done some work with items in the inventory scene, we were yet to tie the two together.

First, that required some bug fixing. I added a quick fix to ensure that save data was retained on scene transfer, and a hooking function to the scam button to make sure it can always attach to the PlayerManager after the scene has been unloaded and loaded again.

Now that we had a library of our items, I gave the GeneratorManager a reference to it so it knows what the items are. That way, after it activates discovering an item, it can decide what the item will be. Based on the generator type, it will pull one from one of four pools of four items each.

One major challenge is that the item discovery and the item management happen in different scenes, which makes it difficult for the scripts to communicate with each other. To solve this problem, and solve the other question of how to save the game, both scripts write to and read from the save file. So, the GeneratorManager checks if there’s space to add another item to the storage in the save data, and in the inventory scene, the ItemManager checks what items are in the save data and loads them up. 

One other addition I made to the code was a variable that factors into the player’s income that can be affected by items. The main challenge with this is that the UI has a copy of the calculations for UI display purposes, so for optimization and organization, I merged them into one float-returning function that other scripts can use to get a value for the income per second.

Besides those important tasks, we also realized an issue with the gameplay: after the first few minutes, there’s no reason for the player to interact with the scam button. To fix this, my last task was to add three new upgrades to the game that increase the amount of money earned when the player clicks the scam button.

Each upgrade makes the money earned get increased by 1%, 2%, then 3% of the player’s income. This makes it somewhat effective at all stages of the game, and increases how effective it is by the number of upgrades the player has. These upgrades also don’t have any exterior thresholds, which means they’re always there as a goal for the player to get. The only requirement is owning one building, which seems like a good time for upgrades to be introduced to the player.

Since this was a new upgrade type, I had to make a new function to handle it, but it was as simple as giving the PlayerManager a new variable that factors into the “money earned on click” function.

CAGD 377 Sprint 5

To start off Sprint 5, I made some backend math functions that our lead asked for–eventually we’ll be able to implement them into upgrades, and the item math might need to use them. One finds the player’s lifetime money, and another finds the player’s raw income unmodified by upgrades.

Next, I added a set of 7 new upgrades that increase the item discovery chance of the respective generators. I added a simple flag on the upgrade class that tells it to increase the item discovery chance instead of the multiplier, and then got to calculating the prices and putting in the data.

In doing so, I also split the item discovery stat into four different ones for the four different item types. While this was done for flexibility, ultimately it never gets fully utilized since each generator only finds one item type. So I think it could be better optimized by putting them back to a single stat, and just having the item discovery go off of which generator found it.

That was all for Sprint 5–quite honestly, I know I could have done more this sprint, I think that as a group we were just at a point in the middle of the semester where we both were missing a little direction, and waiting on all our pieces to be complete so they can be put together.

So, here’s our direction! Going forward into Sprint 6, here’s the three biggest priorities: the item system, getting the art assets in the game, and making sure the UI looks good on mobile.

The item system is our plus one feature, so it’s vital that it makes it into the game on release. Getting it completed mostly requires hooking it up to the existing systems. For Sprint 6, one of my jobs will be to make sure the item discovery system’s activation is hooked up to the item spawner. Additionally, I’ll be looking at the save data to make sure the items can be saved.

Our artists have made some wonderful models for the game, but we haven’t tested putting them in unity yet. This is also vital to the game’s success and to make sure that our artists’ work gets appreciated. This sprint, we’ve gotta get the models in unity so we know that everything’s configured correctly on release.

Lastly, the UI works on PC while we’re developing it, but it still looks off on mobile. This will be another one of my jobs, making sure it scales properly on a mobile device and that there’s room for the models to be on the main screen.

Here’s an oversimplified mockup I made during our team’s discussion, showing how everything should be organized so the art can fit in.

Additionally, I have a few stretch goals for myself if I can complete everything else with time to spare. I’d also like to implement a few more upgrades for the SCAM button, increasing the money generated when the player clicks it. Our lead has this idea in the backlog, but it’ll only get added if we have time, so I’d like to make sure I have time because it’d be a piece of cake for me to implement, and increase the number of things the player can do.

Looking further ahead with the plan, I’d also like to see if we have time to implement the prestige system in Sprint 7. That’s something that would probably only get added further down the line, but coding-wise I don’t think it’s too complicated, and it would make a fun addition to the game.