Overview Of This Week

This week I started my simple mechanics into my indie game project called Made-Man. Movement was mainly implemented into the main level. Most of this week, involved making my main menu screen and starting the options menu.

Made-Man: Menu Screen

The main menu screen was completed this week. It was quite simple to implement. I also completed a stretch goal of adding a theme song which was desired from my GDD called “Blueberry Hill”. The final product will be shown below:

Made-Man: Options Menu

The main function for the options menu is to implement accessibility into the game. The way to implement this is to allow the player to set whatever key binding suits them. The main focus was to implement the changing of the movement keys. This is where I found out how different the changing of the bindings were for the axis mappings and the action mappings. This is where I dedicated my time in making the axis mappings for this week. The way this works is very complex so the most important things will be covered. The first image will show what happens when the player presses the movement button in order to change the keys:

There’s more to how the movement is set but this is what I am most proud of. Basically, what will happen is that the player will press the button and then a confirmation screen will appear which will say to the player what current key will be bound to which action. The keys inputted won’t actually be set as a binding until it is 100 percent sure that all the keys have been inputted. This is due to the fact that the text within the button will be set to null and will need the restored string in order to set it back. Finally, the keys from the key array will then be implemented into the necessary axis bindings.

Extra Things I Have Learnt Or Problems I Have Solved This Week

There were not many problems that were encountered. However, this used much planning to ensure that no single piece would fail. The main skill used was patience in thinking how each process of this code would work as one mistake would mean that the whole code would fail. However, I completed the goals in time in order to implement my stretch goals such as:

• I added the song desired from my GDD into the main menu
• I decided to make the button blank when you click it for aesthetic reasons as it looked more professional than having the previous key binds still showing until they were updated
• I also used structures to allow for the text within the buttons to be recovered as they would be set to blank

Plans For Next Week

My plans for next week will be to try to implement bindings for all of the action mappings as well as developing my industry presentation.