I haven’t made any specific posts about my game in a while, so I thought I’d just make a quick status update.
Code Progress
Progress is coming along quite nicely. Most of the game systems are done (though I have some modifications to make to enable things like curved enemy beam weapons and side-by-side ship paths).
- Enemies have multiple ways of spawning, and can follow paths (or not).
- All four weapons are implemented
- The player can now die (and respawn). Lives are tracked (but the game currently doesn’t game-over if the player dies, as that would be a pain for testing).
- The scoring system is in (with a first run at a score multiplier system).
- The on-screen display has been completely redesigned.
- Two players can play at once, which includes a special combination lightning attack that is even more devastating than the standard lightning attack.
Here is a video of a lot of those systems in action:
Art Work
For the last few evenings, I’ve been working on designs for the enemy ships (though I’ll note that the background is still very much throwaway temp art). I plan to have about 5 or 6 types of ships in the first level of the game (not counting the boss) – and the goal is to have at least 2 new types in each successive level of the game.
Here are a few of the current designs:
(click to enlarge)
The goal is to make the ships look fairly organic – I’m completely avoiding hard edges (except for claw-like points), and trying to make them as smooth and rounded as possible. Thanks to Silo and its subdivision surfaces, this is actually pretty easy 🙂 The gray/green/purple combination feels, to me, rather otherworldly, and it’s less “standard” than the traditional black and red alien ship motif (i.e. Cylon ships). The color scheme will pose some interesting problems when it comes time to make levels inside of alien locations though – I’ll need a way to make the alien ships stand out from the background, while simultaneously make the background feel like it belongs to the same creatures that are piloting those ships.
Goals
I’m aiming to have two full levels of the game done by the end of next month, which should give me adequate time to get everything that needs to be implemented for them implemented, and polish them to a nice shine. There’s still quite a bit to do:
- As stated above, I want to allow curved beam weapons from the enemies (the player’s curved beam weapon is currently a special case)
- Also stated above, I want to be able to have enemies spawn side-by-side along paths (so that I can easily make them fly in in formations instead of just one at a time)
- There’s no sound/music code yet, though with XNA that’s pretty straightforward.
- Controller rumble!
- I’m sure there’s some code that I’ll need to add to enable giant boss fights.
- Not to mention the additional art/sound/music work to make it all shine.
It’s going to be an interesting month and a half. Off I go, I’ve got work to do!