Greetings everyone!
This has been yet another busy week,
mostly because we were a little behind with our schedule on Monday.
We managed to catch up, though. This week we made the game playable
by implementing the paths for the enemies, adding the shooting
behavior for the enemies and allowing the levels and paths to be
built from XML files. This last thing basically means that we can now
successfully create the levels in a separate file instead of having
to put the level design into the code itself. The basics for this
were implemented earlier, but only this week did we complete the code
that allows us to actually read the files and use their data in the
way we want to. As of writing this there are still some bugs in the
system but those are already being solved.
What all of the above means is that we
now have a playable, albeit very simple, game! As soon as the biggest
bugs have been fixed we could just start designing levels and enemies
and have a fully functioning game. However, that's not what we're
going to do. Right now the enemy sprites are still simple 2D
replacements for the upcoming renders of 3D models that'll look much
better. Important things like the menu, high scores, pause and mute
options as well as the HUD haven't been made yet. We still don't have
a boss made yet, although we could simulate one by giving a regular
enemy strong attacks and loads of health. We also haven't added the
shop where you can purchase upgrades for your ship yet or implemented
and tested the dynamic difficulty. As you can see we still have a
long way to go, but it's exciting that the core functionality is now
all there!
That's not to say we didn't add
anything that isn't strictly necessary for the core gameplay, though.
One of the things we added is a shield around the player that slowly
fades when it accumulates damage. Another one is that we added
knockback when the player bumps into an enemy ship, damaging both of
them slightly and sending your ship reeling preventing the player
from controlling it for about half a second to a second.
I also messed around a little with the
bullet patterns to test the shooting system. In only 20-30 minutes I
was able to whip up this bullet pattern:
In the picture you can see the
temporary sprites for the enemies (the one for the "boss" is quite silly :P) and the bullets we use for testing
purposes and the shield around the player. You can also see that the
player bullets are not always spaced the same – this is because,
unlike earlier, the positions of the gun are correctly recalculated
when the player moves the ship sideways which causes the sprite to
tilt, moving the guns closer to each other. It's a small detail, but
one that's very noticeable when you're playing the game – imagine
the bullets appearing out of thin air somewhere on the sides of your
ship!
Next week we'll start working on the shops and upgrades as well as the bosses.