Day 2: Wednesday - Gloss: Shiny Things

Day two of rae jam down - slightly ruined by having to lay in a dentist's chair for two hours this morning. 

Coin Chaos v004 is the update attached. Here's what has changed:

Particles Trails!

Basic particles are in, using a crude particle engine I wrote earlier this year for an incomplete game about fireworks. The particles are pretty simple, but are enough to inject a bit of life into the coins being flicked I think. They also make the 'Game Over' effect more cheerful, and don't seem to have a large effect on the frame rate of the game fortunately.

I didn't get around to adding collision particles between the coins...perhaps I still should. The jam is largely about getting a much done as possible in a short space of time, so a lot of this is -> that mostly works and looks ok, move onto the next thing. I'm hoping to have a rough enough game by the end I can polish into something finished.

Animating the Coin Collection:

As I'd added an Animator and easing functions on day one, I've also used them to animate the coin collection sliding up before you flick the top one. This required a bit of refactoring, and fixing one interesting bug caused by the interaction of the animation logic, and the physics engine! Apparently it's not recommended to combine easing animation with physics simulation bodies - if only I'd known :)

A Fixed Level:

I've started building in a simple system to define fixed levels, so you'll notice there's one fixed level now - which is one target coin surrounded by six normal coins. This is the start of the level system I'll be trying to build tomorrow.

Print Debugging Still Works:

Print debugging is a tried and true debugging technique from the dawn of computer programming, particularly in C. This technique still works surprisingly well, even in the age of step through debuggers and IDE's. 

Even a simple game has a lot of state in motion, and is changing that state 50 times a second. Adding pd->system->logToConsole messages in carefully considered spots quickly highlights the ebb and flow of your app and helps you to spot odd state changes which invariably lead to game bugs.

Onto day 3 tomorrow - and remember to floss!