The 3 stages of the second boss are complete. Next up are balancing the second boss (fire rate, number of projectiles, movement speed) and creating the second stage. Also a couple of the boss stages are a little lackluster and may need to be “upgraded” so I am going  to talk to my boss designer about that.

I recently got a new Laptop to replace both my old laptop and my desktop and I am happy with it. Today I finished my desk setup for it by setting up the extra monitor and it feels good. I have never had more than one monitor before but switching between the two feels natural.

For those of you that know me you know that I needed this upgrade my two old computers had the nicknames  coal-powered toaster oven (for the laptop) and Lunchbox (for the mac mini). Cogswell’s game club hosts LAN parties and a specific person (no names but his nickname is one percent) was infuriated that my gaming rig was a mac mini. It was actually rather funny. First time I brought it I just had to look at him and go “You mad?” His response? “Just a bit, yeah.”

Rest in peace lunch box and toaster you won’t be missed.

Began development of the second boss for the bullet hell game (seriously need a better development name for it). The first stage of this boss involves the boss itself sitting in the center of the screen and shooting projectiles in four “walls” that the player has to avoid while firing at the boss.

Initially the design was fairly simple and straightforward. When the boss fires another set of projectiles for the wall it spawns a game object (henceforth called the bullet holder) on top of itself that contains four bullets that move outwards.

When I got the basics for this down I added rotation to the Bullet holder so that the bullets would seem to be in a straight line from the Boss instead of looking like a whip.

At first this caused some strange results until I realized one of my other scripts that was designed to keep the bullets moving along with the scene was causing the groups to go off in different directions.

With that fixed I found one more strangeness. When I got the bullets going in a “straight” line they would eventually turn back on there path because of the rotation. Not sure about  the physics/geometry causing this but it is a strange effect to see.

So in short I have most of the first stage of the level two boss working with a few questions for my boss designer and two more stages to go.

I do not have a lot of experience with the Bullet Hell genre but one of my friends helping me with this project does, he is giving me some designs for bosses that I will implement and design a level for. I am approaching finishing the implementation of the first such boss.

The boss itself simply moves back and forth across the screen, Its attack pattern is spawning 6 projectiles from specific spots and after a delay the projectiles launch towards the player. Before the projectile launches it is turning to track the player, when it is launched the tracking script is turned off and a force is applied to the object. The effect is that if the player continues to move the projectile will not hit them, but the player must be wary of being driven in to a corner and hit by the other projectiles.

As the Boss gets lower on hit points the pattern changes twice. At first the projectiles spawn above the player, in the second pattern they spawn on both sides of the screen along the edges, and the final pattern spawns  along the bottom of  the screen. In addition to changing patterns the delay between shoots firing also decreases and the speed of the projectiles increases slightly.

This boss may be a bit on the easy side for a bullet hell but it is the boss of level one and the other bosses will be harder.

I honestly believe that the GamerGate “movement”/”group”/hashtag had some good points about ethics in games journalism. I think a lot of good, intelligent people were involved and wanted to make a positive impact. However the obscene amount of abuse and threats coming from some of the people that use the hashtag, and the fact that most of the “discussion” (read shouting matches) has taken place on Twitter has poisoned the GamerGate identity beyond repair.

First I do not condone the actions of anyone on whatever “side” that make threats, verbally abuse, or allow others to do these things. It is sickening that people think that by threatening people out of their CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT to free speech that they can somehow make a point of any kind. Conversation only happens when there are two opposing viewpoints. This is why I play the devil’s advocate so much, so that the conversation does not become an echo chamber.

So all of yesterday I was struggling with how to implement a fire attack in to the Bullet Hell game. The basics of the attack would be that it floated in front of the player for a few seconds dealing damage over time to whatever it hit. The two problems were that when I spawned in the fire I couldn’t get it to follow the player and it would deal damage in a spastic and unpredictable way. I struggled with it all day and today after one thought I solved it……. in about 5 minutes. If I had started from scratch for the fire scripts and such it would have taken me about 20-30 minutes, mostly writing scripts I had done in my head……

The idea was a simple one, one that I had already half implemented in another part of the game and fully in another project. Rather than spawning in the fire when I used it instead I would toggle the renderer and collider of the fire when it was in use and when if wasn’t. Both problems fixed. deals damage as I want it to, moves with the player, does exactly what I want it to.

So in short: Yesterday I got a flint and steel and wondered why I couldn’t light anything on fire, Today I realized I could just use this convenient flame thrower instead. FIRE IS WORKING I AM SOOOO HAPPY NOW!

I was talking to a friend of mine this last week about games we wanted to develop. During the conversation he mentioned that he wanted to make a Bullet Hell game where you play as a dragon pillaging the country side. I thought about it and decided to try and implement the basic elements of a Bullet Hell game (character movement within a camera space, enemies, different fire modes, auto forward progression through the level, etc.). When I told my friend about what I had done he was excited. And so the two of us along with another of our friends (and hopefully a few others) have decided to further design and implement this game.

Got the character moving at a reasonable speed. Still need to fix the wall jumping “bug” from the last game I used this script in, probably just need to better define what ground is in the scripts.

Got a basic projectile firing system going. The projectiles have a simple script telling them to go straight. This seamed to work for a while until I noticed that after going through something they would start turning and wouldn’t stop. This set them in spiral pasterns and orbits around the level.

Needless to say the projectiles where a failure. Entertaining, but a failure nonetheless.

Working on a new game idea.

It started with the simple desire to make a 3D platformter. I had made a 2D platformer before but when I looked back at the games I have made they can all be categorized as 2D. So it was time to make something in 3D for once and platformer is a simple genre, if not an easy one.

While I was brainstorming I thought of a mechanic for this game where you toggle blocks on and off allowing you to progress through the level. I am tying the toggle to targets the player must shoot and that allowed for some more types of interactions with the targets. First you have the straight forward shot that moves at a reasonable rate. The second shot is bounce and moves at about the same speed as the first but can be used to shot around corners and other trick shots. the third shot is a slow shot that can be used to cause a delayed toggle.

More news on this game to come.

This week I finished putting together the first playable for my board game titled Minions and Mayhem.

I hand wrote all of the 200+ cards for this version (not doing that again). As a result I was driven slightly more insane than usual.

Now I need some test subjects… I mean volunteers to play it with. However while I was writing out the cards I found some holes in the rules that I need to iron out first.