Hud

While creating this hud that depicts life and ammunition of the player, I had to settle on decisions pertaining to the underlying design of the game.

First non-functional placeholder concept (this is just a single sprite)

Using my go-to style, but this did not match the visual style of the joystick buttons

Using pieces of licensed interface art to create the look

Fully functional, and matches the rest of the interface

Ammunition

There will be unlimited total ammunition for each gun. However, each gradually refills at a constant rate over time without the need of a reload animation. When depleted, the player can still fire rockets or bullets, but at a very slow rate as ammo is restocked automatically.

I made this decision to encourage usage of secondary weapons when ammunition of the primary weapon is depleted. If weapons instead were reloaded to maximum capacity using an animation induced by a button (or automatic when ammo is fully depleted), then it would lead to some annoying situations:

• Being forced to run away while reloading.
• Never being able to reload successfully because of the overwhelming number of enemies.
• Never needing the use of secondary weapons.

These small decisions may seem trivial, but it makes an enormous impact on future design decisions and the overall feel of the game.

Life

I have adjusted the life of the player to be integers depicted by whole-hearts rather than some adjustable percentage meter. Unlike similar interfaces featured in games like Legend of Zelda, I wanted absolutely any hit to deduct a full heart, rather than half or full on a conditional basis. To adjust difficultly, I would simply increase the chances of the player getting hit, rather than adjusting damage to deduct half or full which could lead to confusion and sense of unfairness.

Therefore, I do not have to adjust damage amounts through tables and function curves which can turn into a huge nightmare.

Keeping both features simple for now...