Turnover - Progress Report for 1/27 - Bystanders, Dispensers & Color Blind Mode news

Skipped a week on progress reports. Not a hell of a lot to show visually over the last few weeks since I have been deep in coding and level layout work.

Bystanders

I’ve been working with KickStarter backers in filling their creative rewards. One backer is creating a Bystander NPC. A Bystander is a decorative NPC that adds some life to the world.

Here is the Bystander NPC that we came up with:

Colorblind

I found a suite of glsl shaders online that (semi-accurately) mimics the different color deficiencies people can have. I spent some time tweaking the colors and indicators for some assets so that they are easier to see for the colorblind. These changes have been placed into an option called Color Blind mode.

Turnover relies on the red / yellow / green color spectrum to indicate warning, danger, and calm. This spectrum can be difficult to see for some people. The new color blind mode mostly adds visual indicators, as well as converting the r/y/g color spectrum to shades of grey.

Honestly, the color palette of Turnover has been forgiving during my tests, so there have not been many changes as of now. When more color blind players have a chance to test it, I should be able to tune the system further.

Object Dispensers

Pickup object dispensers have been refactored. For example, instead of getting a water bottle from a vending machine directly, it will now dispense one in front of the machine, emitting a dispensing noise that could possibly alert enemies.

This change affects vending machines (water bottles), tool boxes (wrenches), and fire extinguishers, which now are in a case that must be broken. Loudly, I might add. Also, Dispensers have a set amount of stock, so don’t waste it!

Changelog

For the rest of the updates from here on in, I’d like to jot down a changelog of the major work since the last progress report.

In the past progress reports, I always show off some art work or mechanics that I’ve completed, but never get into the other gameplay or programming related changes. It might make it seem like not much is happening from update to update, but that’s far from the truth.

So, here is the completed work since the last progress update.

• More fading effects between screens.
• Cut scene work. Started on concept for opening cut scene. Fixed some positioning issues with subtitle text. More script work.
• Rockets from Turrets travel faster. The were way too easy to avoid.
• Repositioned options/bind screen text so it is more centered.
• Added sound when selecting options & starting a new game.
• Fixed camera jittering when following the player.
• Lowered the Security Camera’s alert time. Now, there is less time between being spotted and it calling an alert.
• Added a video resolution validity check.
• Fixed Sentinel’s stun animation, which was broke in previous build.
• Fixed Sentinel firing animation. Now, it is timed correctly.
• Changed draw order of Fire Extinguisher spray and grenade fire. Now, it draws over other sprites correctly.
• Dissipating (fading) Fire Extinguisher spray now will NOT put out newly created fire. Only fresh spray will.
• Sentinel Shotgun 1 spread sloppier. Shotgun 2 tighter.
• Finished / tested / incorporated feedback for Level 25.
• Finished layout of Level 26, needs testing.
• Began wall / floor deco of levels 22 - 25.

And there you have it.

So, things are coming along well. My current schedule is one new level layout completed per week or two until they are all finished. Then, I work towards testing and finishing the first release of Turnover. I’m sure It’ll get here quicker than I think.