Updates

Bugfix: trigger gameover imediatelly on last hit

During the first 2 lives, the player have a tolerance period where she can take hits without losing another life, this is while the blinking animation is happening. But allowing this tolerance period on the last hit before gameeover doesnt make sense because there is no more lifes left, and it would only cofuse the player that would still see movement while blinking and then, when everything stops due to the gameover screen, the player might not be able to see which exact obstacle was the responsible for the finaL blow.

To prevent such confusion, the last hit will now stop everything immediately, and make it super clear to the player why the game ended because the screen will be frozen with the final obstacle still visible on screen.

Cover on/off is no longer an option

This one came from user feedback, instead of the first foreground layer, with bushes and cacti being just a cosmetic extra that can be turned off and on, the extra layer now is considered one extra challenge and will be one of the different elements that are introduced gradually according to progress, so, after the long rocks, after the first night cycle and after meteors, the extra cover layer will automatically start and impose one extra spice/ challenge to the game.

Information / Credits Screen

This game was only possible to make in such a short time thanks to the great contributions of amazing artists that gave back to the commons their art, sharing the love with free licenses such as CCZero for example. Listing their names in a credits screen is the minimum I can do to recognize their work and express my gratitude. The game now has an info page that can be acessed from the starting page.

Next steps

We are now entering on an integration phase, the game is on a finished state and the efforts will be into integrating it on a host page from the sponsors, with an example on how the game can comunicate it’s states, such as the current high score achieved, and maybe some basic telemetry with javascript functions from the parent html page, that can do whatever it wants with it, for example, consuming an API that display different messages from the server according to the final score, or that display some kind of gift to the best players, like discount coupons for example.

Hacking is expected

The sponsors are aware that, being game that is mainly client-side, the barrier for cheating or “hacking” the game are very low, so the balance of what to present as a reward for playing or for having a big score shouldn’t be nothing critical or bank-breaking. The “security model” if such a name can even be used is basically none, it’s basically: “assume that all game code is acessible” and accept it.

In the end of the day, it should be just easier to play the game for 5 minutes and achieve the highest prize, than go into the trouble of disassembling the resources to cheat. It’s a simple “thank you” little game after all, and not the next competitive e-sport platform.

Anti-cheating was completely out of this scope and was never a priority.

Work Summary

I estimate having worked for about 6 hours, which leaves me with a remaining budget of 21 hours.

Commits

◆  Commit ID: 52207f19ff4078345d8dee22814c5fafa08c010a
│  Change ID: vmwlzszkttponywxwozpprzxsqlttopp
│  Bookmarks: main main@git main@origin
│
│      information / credits screen
│
│
│      (no description set)
│
◆  Commit ID: 52207f19ff4078345d8dee22814c5fafa08c010a
│  Change ID: vmwlzszkttponywxwozpprzxsqlttopp
│  Bookmarks: main main@git main@origin
│
│      information / credits screen
│
◆  Commit ID: 3bfc1a4967899354ff3e0e71ecded0fdd2cdb1b3
│  Change ID: sntnukxwuxxkpxpwxllopvmqyylovxkk
│
│      automatic cover
│
│      - cover is no longer an option toggle
│      - it will autostart after a configurable number of score milestones (16
│        by default)
│
◆  Commit ID: c55be4615fcdb4c11a27cf6d316a1975a279a3f5
│  Change ID: uyvlukxxxzxkmtqnptuxwnyvzwrwwnkp
│
│      immediately trigger gameover on last hit
│
│          On intermediary hits we want to give the player some room and not
│      compute a second hit while it is still blinking for the first one
│          However, if we do that on the last hit, the gameover screen will stop
│      the player only after she moved away from the obstacle that caused the
│      gameover, and this can make the player think that the last hit didnt
│      happened because the stopped screen dont show the obstacle over the
│      player
│
│          This patch makes the final hit different than the previous one,
│      signaling an immediate game over, which will always display the exact
│      obstacle that caused the ending of the game.
│
◆  Commit ID: bebf9fcd2d468a8793330ae3329daa09f29c5b0b
│  Change ID: otoyxysolqvrwrsvuykmnkzuooqztypm
│
│      new devlog + arm export
│