Today’s work was simple: set up the game so I could make a build and give it to someone. This may sound simple but after the modifications I made for testing purposes I had to go back in and triple check every variable. For instance when I died in level two I reloaded in level one instead of level two. This made me also realize that if you beat the final boss the next level would never load so I fixed all of these problems.

Another change I made was to make the main fire mode of the player an auto fire instead of holding down the button. There is no reason not to be firing so I just made it so that the player doesn’t have to think about it.

There were several other problems and still several more things I am considering changing but most of them can wait until after I get some people to play test it.

Added bomb drops to the game. At first I was wondering if I should just have the drops sitting in the world or find a way to have defeated enemies drop them. Once I decided on enemies dropping them I had to decide how to get them to do it. The most obvious way of doing it is to replace the scripts on the ones that drop pickups but it felt like that was too awkward. Then I remembered that my enemies already drop something on death, they drop an “explosion” visual effect. So for a few enemies they drop bomb pickups attached to the explosion.

I also added a mechanic for gaining additional lives. After gaining X points you gain one life.

Today I was planning on adding the asteroids from level 3 in to level two. But upon replaying level two I realized that the level was too busy already and didn’t do that, instead I reduced the number of projectiles the enemies fire and spread them out a bit more.

I also went back to level one and tweaked the boss to work better with the increased play area.

Should have done this a long time ago but I finally got around to adding in a display for score, lives, and bombs. I also moved where the remaining bombs data is stored and removed the boss 1 hit point display after I discovered a bug with it (then thought of a solution but haven’t implemented it yet).

Finished the final major pass on level three. Will revisit it and the others in the final tweaking days of the project. Now to get displays for Lives, Bombs, and Score.

Almost done with level 3. Still have a few things I want to try out to make it look smoother but I like the layout. Next Monday I will be finishing level 3, couple things to change are activators, level movement speed, asteroid speed, placement, and frequency. After that I have to implement the sidebar where you see: score, lives, bombs, and any other relevant data. Then I have a few more refinements for level 2. Then I get to play with adding power ups (something I had been meaning to do and have the code for but never put in). Friday will be messing with numbers and making sure all the levels still work. Over the weekend I am going to try and get some friends to try it out and then implement changes based on feedback.

I have found the style I am going to use for level 3. It involves two lines of pulse enemies along either side of the screen creating a restrictive path for the player and “asteroids” being launched at them at predetermined points along the level. These “asteroids” lock on to the player at launch but don’t deviate from there initial path, so as long as the player is moving they shouldn’t be too hard to dodge.

This level will likely get closest to a traditional bullet hell as it is more about memorizing a pattern than it is about quick thinking, although the boss still has randomized elements that require fast reactions.

Spent a good part of the day doing house work today so  I didn’t get much work done on level 3.

Got some work done on level three today, not as much as I would like but I have some more ideas to try to make it feel right. Had a bit of a family emergency over the weekend that is occasionally interrupting my work flow but things seem to have mostly stabilized.

Oops, forgot about these for a while. My bad. Going to do these daily from now on. Even if it is just “I tweaked some numbers and now it feels better” or “Did a bunch of chores today and I will be doing X activity tomorrow.”

As for what I have been doing since my last update I have been working on the level 3 boss. This one is a bit different from the others in that it does not change its pattern based on its health. Instead it has three fire points with distinct fire types, a laser on the left that toggles off and on, a blaster on the right that fires a stream of bullets straight ahead, and a center fire point that launches two different bullet patterns directly at the player.

My next step is to construct the level for this boss.