Wrapping things up!

Golden Release is today, and I'd be a liar if I said I wasn't nervous. There are still a few loose ends we're trying to tie up; namely, getting the first level totally finished and polished. We met with Michael and Dom last week and they gave us some really great advice on how to make our first level really cool. We've spent the past week trying to implement the things they've said. Our first level goes a little something like this: it's your first day on the job as a space janitor; you're running through a rudimentary training exercise when suddenly space pirates attack! Since your ally's ship's big lasers are offline, it falls to you (the player) to somehow disable the pirate ship by shooting trash at it.

Originally, the obstacles the player faced in this part of the level would be the lasers fired from the tiny ships that spawn from the bigger ships. But the ships tended to cluster up in one area and it was easy for the player to go around the danger and destroy the pirate ship with relative ease. Michael and Dom advised us to spread the smaller ships out so that the player would be forced to dodge through some lasers on the way to destroying the ship. Also, the uniform up-and-down motion of the alien ships is a reference to the old game Space Invaders, which gives our game that retro-feel that is so popular these days.

Additionally, we're trying to prepare for our presentation today. I'm writing an instruction manual and Xuan is designing a box that we can use for our golden submission. Everything is coming together, I think. At any rate, Space Waste is getting 'released' today, so look for it on the shelves of your local Gamestop!