Presentation and Graphics

Presentation/Graphics Devlog

This is the fourth devlog for my game Ultimate Pacman and it is about presentation and graphics.

For this checkpoint I animated the ghosts so they would always face the way they were travelling. To do this I replaced the old ghost sprites with ones from a new spritesheet from here: (Pac-Man Ghost Sprites, 2020). I then made a script that took in the four sprites for each direction the ghost could face and made the current sprite the appropriate one based on the rotation of the ghost game object. An alternative approach considered was to change the sprite based on the ghost’s velocity. A gif of the ghosts facing where they are going can be seen below:

Next I added particle effects for when the player collects coins and for when the player is hit by a ghost. This was done using a prefab of an explosion particle effect and then instantiating one of these whenever a coins was collected. For the player getting hit effect I used this same process but changed the colour, speed, number, and size of the particles in the destroy on collision script. A gif of these effects can be seen below:

After this I implemented a trail for when the player was using a power-up. This was done using a trail renderer component on a child game object of the player and changing the sorting order of the trail in the player movement script so the trail was only visible when a power-up was active. An alternative to this considered was to only activate the trail when the player picked up a power-up and deactivate it when the power-up ended. The player sprite’s colour was also made to change in the player movement script based on which if any power-up was active. A possible improvement would be to change the trail colour based on what power-up is active. A gif of the power-up effects can be seen below:  

The feedback received from various members of the tutorial group consisted of statements saying that the power-ups looked good and that they functioned well and that the particles looked good as well. Another piece of feedback was that the trails for when a power-up was being used provided good visual feedback to the player. As well as this feedback was given that the collecting coin animations were too large. This has since been changed so they are no longer as large and distracting. Further improvements planned based on this feedback are to implement more power-ups with the same style of particle effects and trails as these were points that were well liked.

References

2020. Pac-Man Ghost Sprites. [online] Available at: http://pixelartmaker.com/art/cbacdb54a4bb09f

[Accessed 23 September 2020].