Last modified: January 26, 2023

Homework 4 - Title Screen, Game Play Instructions, Effects & Polish (Final Submission)

Part 1: Title Screen & Game Play Instructions

Add a title screen with a button to start the game and a button for gameplay instructions. Optionally, you could add more buttons for things like high scores and settings (i.e. volume control, music..etc)

Part 2: Effects & Polish

Add all the extra sound effects, special effects, animations, and extra features and levels to make your game more complete, of higher quality, and more fun to play. If you were using placeholder images before, look below for help with finding better graphics and editing the images. Make it as fun as possible! This is your final version. See the rubric at the end of this page to see how it will be graded.

• Each team member should contribute significantly (as equally as possible)
• Make sure you update your journals to keep a log of what you have done.
• For submission, simply make sure your final version has been pushed to your git repository.

Finding Images & Sounds

Unless you're a digital artist, you'll be using art made by others. You can find TONS of game graphics by searching Google for sprite sheets and tilesets. Here are example search queries:

• "Fantasy sprite sheet"
• "Fantasy tileset"
• "Mario sprite sheet"
• "Mario "tileset"

And here are a few websites dedicated to game graphics/sounds:

• Open Source: https://opengameart.org (has images, sounds, and music)
• Retro: https://retrogamezone.co.uk/nes.htm | https://nesmaps.com
• Modern: https://craftpix.net/freebies/ | https://www.gameart2d.com/freebies.html | https://itch.io/game-assets/tag-tileset
• Sound Effects: https://freesound.org/ (use this Online Audio Trimmer to trim the sounds to just the part you want)
• To play a sound, you can use the playSound(java.lang.String soundFile) method in the Greenfoot class.
  • Greenfoot.playSound("yell.wav"); // yell.wav must be in the sounds folder of your project
• If you need to play a short sound many times in a row quickly, you may find this custom Sound class helpful.

Editing Images

Whatever images you find will probably have to be edited. At a minimum, you should

1. Remove any non-transparent backgrounds
2. Crop out dead space on all edges
3. Resize images to fit your game

The steps above are illustrated in the image editing tutorial below. To follow along with the tutorial, download and install GIMP. It's a free and powerful image editor.

Click here for Image Editing Tutorial

Alternatively, you can also use Pixlr which is an image editor you can use directly in your browser.

Rubric

• Documentation (30 points)
  • Your README file contains clear documentation explaining what your game is and how to play it
  • Your journal is filled out correctly and is complete
• Effort (30 points)
  • Your progress journal, code, and repository history will tell a story of how much effort you put into your game.
• Functionality and Completeness (20 points)
  • Does your game feel like a complete game that runs free of errors?
• Complexity (10 points)
  • How complex is your game?
  • Is it a very basic version of the game or does it have complex features and effects?
• Class Design and Code Organization (5 points)
  • Did you hard-code everything or did you take time to plan class structures and create reusable objects?
• Game Play Quality (5 points)
  • Does your game feel smooth and well-polished? Is it engaging, fun, and addictive? Replay value?