So last week I wrote about how we used stars as collectibles. Since then we continued to work on that among other things to get our game done for Beta. After being able to spawn stars from dead enemies and pick them up we wanted the to show the player the count as well. The reason behind why we rather show the stars than to hide them is that in the end our game is about high score. There for you should always be able to see how you rank up to previous attempts and other players at any moment. I also feel like it is much more satisfying to collect something if you can see how it grows while you collect them.
Something we thought about was where the text was supposed to be placed next to the symbol. The two options we were choosing between was to the right or to the left. The most games I have seen have had their text to the right. The counter argument was to have the text more centered to the screen as it is the number you will more likely want to look at than the image. As you can see we finally decided to have it to the left.
Through our textmanager we loaded the image of the star and by calculating the center of the window and then reduce that value by the same only multiplied by a number we could place the image where we wanted it. Since it is calculated from the windows position and not from the background it will follow the screen as it moves. The same was done with the counter of the stars.
We had to switch the image of the star to one with a white boarder though so that you can see it on top of the black nothingness that is outside the map right now.
We also added sounds to the stars. From the sound player we loaded in three sounds that are very similar to each other but in different tones. Then we have a function where we say that every time a star is picked up the soundmanager should play one of the three sounds randomly so that it doesn’t get too repetitive when you collect large amounts of stars. Right now every enemy drops 16 stars each. Even though you mostly pick up many stars at the same time you will still hear the sound quite a few times over the course of the game.
Thats what I had for this week. Take care and I’ll see you in class
/ Hampus Lyman
happe22 
Hi,
I hope I understood right, you are talking about your score system or a counter as a feature in this post? I’m a bit confused when you say that you rather wanted to show the player the stars than hide them. If you would have hid them do you mean the player would only find out the score if the game ended? Is that what you mean?
I think it would be good if you try to be more consistent when you explain things, are you talking about hiding the score counter or the actual stars?
When you talk about what side to place the text, (right or left) do you mean the actual score text, the numbers? Because I was looking at your screenshot and didn’t see any text.
Why did you choose to put the score on one side or the other of the star symbol? Was it just random or did you base that decision on how the score adds up? For example when the score hits 1000 points will that cause problems with drawing the number out on screen in front or behind the star symbol?
Why did you choose to load the star symbol with your text manager and not your sprite manager? Isn’t the text manager only supposed to handle text, or did you perhaps build your text manager in a different way so it handles both sprites and texts?
I’m sorry for all the questions but I had to read your blog post at least two times to start to understand what you meant. You should try to write like you try to explain something for someone who never heard of your game before. That way it will be easier for an outsider to follow your reasoning. Try to take that to your next blog post, assignment or no assignment.