Alright Major Update Time:
First and Foremost, the game now has proper patterns that spawn at a fixed rate (the delay gets shorter on higher difficulties intentionally)
while it is also possible to customize patterns adding them to a pool of pre-made patterns that the RNG manages.
Secondly we now have Smart-Bombs
1 Smart-Bomb is given to the player for every 50 + X kills he/she scores (where X starts at 0 and is increased by 10 for every bomb gained during gameplay)
whenever the player triggers a smart-bomb a shock-wave is created from the center of the field that expands towards the edges, instantly
destroying any advancing enemy walls it comes into contact (pretty much clearing the area)
seeing how it's relatively easy to get a smart-bomb at the start (50 kills, and by this point you might be going from normal to hard difficulty)
it's a good strategy to save them for when you reach a higher difficulty, have most of your shield destroyed or when X is already at 40+ in
value.
Next up we also have the endgame screen already done.
basically once your core blows up, (taking all the objects in the screen with it) the endgame screen (still a WIP) appears,
as of right now I only have it ask the player if he/she wants to continue or quit the game, eventually I'll also add a local high-score system
(similar to that of flappy bird / super hexagon where if your current score > high score, the screen instead tells you,
that you've reached a new high-score)
Also a small update on the particles, while I did spawn them successfully they seemed to always explode in the same exact pattern which kinda
made the explosions look stale, now the patterns are totally randomized and look a lot better.
And to give people something to anticipate, here's a brief vid with the new updates in place, NOTE: smart bombs ARE implemented here, but there's no HUD
element for them (yet...) hope you guys enjoy ;D
To sum things up here's a new updated list of all the features my project has at the moment, while also showing
future updates to work on:
WHAT I HAVE SO FAR:
+Title Screen (not shown in the vid, there's a transition but it's disabled atm)
+Core Gameplay (95% done, bombs need HUD elements)
+Particle System for most explosions (smart-bombs excluded)
+Smart Bomb system
+Endgame options (to be expanded)
INCOMING:
-Main Menu ( STILL designing it, but won't implement until I sort out the other features.)
-High Score system, (working on it as we speak, to be implemented on endgame options)
-Music & SFX (For the next update I'll probably have a placeholder to show.)
-Jukebox (once I have a good set of music tracks I'll work on this)
-A finite survival mode (rather than just kill for score, in here it's kill to successfully end the game)
-HARD MODE (You start in MELTDOWN instantly with only 3 bombs, no additional bombs, the core is NOT protected by a shield. )
-A port to Android (I'm aiming for 4.2.2 ;D)
-Gyroscope Controls (to be seen and possibly discussed.)
WISHFUL THINKING:
(the following I'd LIKE to implement, but with my current skill are possibly best left out.)
-MP3 recognition, (While I cannot implement it anymore as part of the core gameplay (script issues) I'll try to at least make it
so that players can overwrite the game music with their own)
-Online Scoreboard (DISCARDED: Local score is good enough.)
And to wrap things up: should the next batch of updates get implemented successfully, If possible by the end of this week
(or the start of the next one) I'll have an .exe (and hopefully an .apk) to download over here
To the Mods:
Once the demo .exe is released, would you please consider moving this topic from "New Projects" to "Projects"?
(assuming all the requirements are met) not only would this help the project get a bit more notoriety but also help
me find play-testers more easily to keep polishing the overall project, thanks in advance
Until Next Time ;D