Battle pong #7 – Sprites time !

Enough with the bars, it’s time to switch to a shape that will give us more “strategic” options !

Shield polygon

Word FTW !

Well first of all… GIMP doesn’t have a polygon or shape tool so what did I do ? I created the shape on Microsoft Word (yeah you read that correctly…), copied it and pasted it in GIMP ! Don’t judge me, I’m a software engineer with zero graphic skills trying to find reliable ways to get my results ! 🙂

Then the second step is to extrude the borders, then rotate correctly the polygon so it can stand on the vertical. For design purposes I will make the polygon empty (no filling). I will maybe fill it with solid color later.

Of course changing the sprite implies editing the collider of the GameObject. I used an edge collider that fits the polygon perfectly !

Cores

Then the second step will be to create the cores. I will create a spritesheet for the core since I want it to be animated ! Same as before, I will use Powerpoint for the basic shape and adapt it.

Spritesheet of the Core animation, the purple dot will move all around

It’s pretty easy to animate sprites in Unity since it will automatically cut the different frames for you if you use their sprite edition tools.

Step 1 : set the sprite mode to multiple then click on Sprite Editor

Step 2 : Set up the slice to automatic and check everything is okay

Bonuses

And finally the bonuses… Well these ones are kinda tricky because they are supposed to show their effects so I came up with the following icons !

Yellow flash for the speed, purple blocked eye for the invisible and blue rays for the teleport ! There is room for progress but that will do for now ! And yes, I made all these by myself which explains the… weird shapes !

I also tried to balance the scripts so bonuses appear evenly in both camps ! It will be the choice of the player to catch it or not.

Ball

In order to make the ball easier to follow I added a small trail to it ! Now let’s see how these new sprites all act together !

Result

I’m satisfied with the possibilities given by the new shield shape, as you can see I can play with the angle thanks to the top/bottom parts or use the center part to just bounce it ! The game feels dynamic overall, I guess one of the trick will be to balancing difficulty.

To sum it up !

What I learned ?

• I played with the Unity sprite editor a little but I guess I’ll have to go deeper to really understand what happens
• A trail is a very nice visual cue to follow the ball
• GIMP seems to only do circles and rectangles shapes…. This is gonna be fun to use…
• The bonus activation with a limited amount of time to use it is constraining…

What are the next steps ?

• Generate an android version (FINALLY)
• Rework the AI script in order to make it smarter (but not too hard…)
• Create visible bounds for the field (especially at the top, it seems weird that the ball bounces)
• Find an easier way to draw shapes in GIMP (EDIT : I realised that Paint had the same shapes…)

Hope you enjoyed the screenshots and see you next time !