Colorblind mode and Leaderboards


I've now added leaderboards for each level, and a weekly one for what is currently named "Arcade mode" where there is no goal. This was the first time I've ever integrated leaderboards into a game and it took a lot of trial and error to get working.  What started out as a quick prototype to remake the 1234 Connect Japanese puzzle game a friend sent me, has turned into quite a learning opportunity for me. I also added a first experience flow that asks if the player is over 16 and agrees to a simple privacy policy before entering the game, it may be going overboard but I got freaked out reading some warnings in the leaderboard documentation and wanted to play it safe since I am now keeping some data based on users interactions for the first time. You can still play the game is you decline any of those prompts it just doesn't go online so you'd miss out on leaderboards.  To go along with the leaderboard you can rename your randomly chosen name by touching the pen icon in the top right of the main menu now as well.

While doing that... I kind of redesigned nearly the entire UI of the game. I didn't want the game to look like Pixel Art, which my original menus were, so I made use of Free Game GUI by pzUH  a GUI asset that I thought matched the theme well because it had circles in it.  There was some issues with the UI that came up while working with this and the leaderboard so I ended up having to move everything to a new canvas using Screen Space, the old one was using World Space.  That in turn broke the intro animations so I had to remake those as well. I also added particle effects when merges and power ups happen and did some tweaking to their material and colors to make them look shinier.


I posted a screenshot of the new colors and UI on Mastodon and someone replied saying a textured patterns on the balls would help colorblind people. I had already programmed the option for a colorblind mode dropdown in settings so I uncommented that out and integrated it so that it would change the texture on the balls on the fly based on the setting, the balls look cool with textures so be sure to try turning it on if you play the game. It was a single comment, but it actually meant a lot to me, a single random person appearing to care about the game.

The last big thing to do I is some sort of tutorial.

Leave a comment

Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.