[GAME] Defender '41 - Laser Defender with a WWII twist!

I loved this section of the course and really got into the project. I took on a few extra challenges to implement things such as (very basic) animations, health display, a custom setting and graphics and some extra game feel stuff (“juice”!).

You can check it out here: https://adynod.itch.io/defender-41

Let me know what you think!

Cheers,
Gareth.

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Oh wow you’ve put so much effort in to that, great job!
Love the little pixel Spitfires etc. Nice to see it completed, menus, music, all that.
Gameplay reminded me of long ago standing at cabinets pumping in coins :slight_smile:

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Thanks StandUp_Gamer! Happy to hear you enjoyed it! A big inspiration was playing 1942/3 in the arcades after Judo sessions as a young 'un. :grinning:

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The game looks really cool

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Thanks Danrich!

Wow nice job man

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Thanks Jacob! Just finished the Glitch Garden section. Struggled to put in the same amount of effort there but learnt a lot about how I could improve my code in this one and take it further. I might return to it and flesh it out after I’m done with the Tilevania section. :slight_smile:

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Wow! Great job! Fun to play and really looks great.

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The game looks good. I am disconcerted by the font selection for the website though.
While readable it tends to make it less appealing to read. With the background color selection I would also try changing the color to black. I think people will have an easier time picking it out.

Hey, thanks for the feedback Carmelblob. Do you mean the description text in the pixellated font on the itch.io page? I’ve been meaning to change that forever so consider it changed. I don’t know about black though considering the dark background colour it sits on. Is this what you meant?

Awesome on the font. As to the text color, just try it black as an experiment then try a few others to see how it affects your eyes. You can try it with the color change prior to the font change.

It all has to do with eye strain and discomfort from the extra work on the eyes.

"
If your site uses a dark background, you should display your paragraph text in gray tint. This won’t put as much stress on the user’s eyes because gray text isn’t as bright as white text. It’ll reflect less light, making it easier to read. Keep in mind that if you’re reading text in a dark room where no light is present, white text on a black background isn’t as hard to read. This is because no light is reflecting
off it in a dark room."

https://uxmovement.com/content/when-to-use-white-text-on-a-dark-background/

https://www.viget.com/articles/color-contrast/

Those are great links. I didn’t put much design effort into the itch page and kind of rushed through it to get the game published. This is a good reminder that just a little extra thought and effort at every step is always appreciated. Thanks for the feedback!

Hopefully it helps you in the future as well since these topics can be used in menu and game design.
Odd but people do not enjoy things that cause them pain or discomfort… Unless they have a mental illness that drives them to love it…

Maybe we should create a game focused on causing visual pain/strain and see if it sells well…:wink: Push a button and cause yourself more eye strain…:smile:

Love your version, looks and plays very well!

Really liking your game. As a minor thing, I would say that the ‘repair’/‘missile’ pickups do not stand out enough to catch the players eye to try and collect them, but overall I think you’ve captured the mood and theme of the setting really well. Well done :slight_smile:

Thanks for checking it out!

@sfChris Yeah, I agree on the pickups. I’d probably redo them with icons if I go back to it and use some fx to highlight them or something.

Thanks for the comments!

and there it is. I have been researching a ton on how to make the sprites flash on damage and couldn’t find anything that worked or made sense.

Super cool build for sure!

Thanks Drew! Have you figured out the flashing sprites thing yet? I also did a bunch of research and was surprised how long it took me to solve. I’m happy to share with my method if you like? I’m at work right now but can post an explanation this eve.

I couldn’t figure out anything that worked for me so feel free to share whenever you’re free! I just finished my build and will be posting. But I’d like to know what you did so i can note it for future games. THANKS!

Hey Drew apologies for the delayed response.

For the “hit flash” I set up a Coroutine which is triggered in the OnTriggerEnter2D event of the entity. The entity (in this case the player or the enemy plane) has a “hit” material, which is pure white, and a “default” material, which is the default sprite, serialized and assigned in the editor. The Coroutine simply accesses the Sprite Renderer and sets the white hit material and returns to the default after a tweak-able variable assigned as “hitLength”.

So the code looks like this for me:

[SerializeField] float hitLength = 0.5f;
[SerializeField] Material Default;
[SerializeField] Material Hit;

private void OnTriggerEnter2D(Collider2D other)
    {
        StartCoroutine(HitAnimCoroutine());
    }

IEnumerator HitAnimCoroutine() // flashes player white when hit
    {
        GetComponent<SpriteRenderer>().material = Hit;
        yield return new WaitForSeconds(hitLength);
        GetComponent<SpriteRenderer>().material = Default;
    }

There were other ways I discovered but this made most sense for my use.

I hope it helps!

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