This week we made multiple improvements to our gameplay loop, physics, UI, and power ups! We started by working on the physics of our pool balls, making them feel more realistic. We also modified the pool table to match reality to prevent an issue where balls would collide with an invisible barrier. After fixing the physics, we finally made our game follow many standard billiard rules, meaning a traditional game of pool could be played. We corrected some of the end state logic to now end the game properly. We really tried to put an emphasis on these changes this week since they were causing the biggest issues for us at last week's playlets.
Next, we turned towards fixing guidance problems. We started by adding a "How-To" page to our main menu, which goes over all the rules of billiards and our control scheme. The player also learns about the control scheme for the game and how the drinks' system works. While doing this, we decided to give our UI elements a facelift and creating the skeleton we need for settings. Now the player can change the sensitivity, invert X or Y axis, or change the SFX volume.
While we want the drinks to play a key role in gameplay, we received complaints that drinks would cover the screen, thus hindering people's ability to play. To solve this issue, we consolidated drinks into a single togglable slide-in menu, making the information just as accessible, but not as in your face. We then worked on the drinks directly, getting most of them in good condition, with descriptions and functions. We do need to work somewhat on how the player gets drinks, since it is currently not scarce.
Looking forward to next week, we want to further improve on the UI elements and add drink effects! We want each player to be able to choose their own settings for gameplay easily and implement the final systems around drinks, like how to get the currency for them.
