Weapons Upgrade

Rewriting the weapons system tonight to be more versatile, compact, and modular. Bubble sprites were being loaded in the level class, while the player and enemy classes had code for input, firing and updating...which worked, but was scattered at best.

Weapons are now built with a number of variables (rate of fire, ammo, and barrel location) which makes it easier to mix and match weapon types and projectiles.

The plan is to totally rework the 'weapon' class which had been stripped pretty bare from the last rework. Also the creation of a new 'ammo' class and a couple of new enums to handle the rate of fire and ammo type possibilities.

I still have some wonkiness going on with the per pixel collision detection on animated sprites but that's not surprising since it originated from a tutorial on static sprites. The collision fix comes at a later date.

Inspired By vs. Educational

Last night I did a bit more research on creatures of the deep (thank you interweb, wikipedia and especially the magic of youTube). The good news is there is a LOT of REALLY cool stuff in the deep ocean...I mean the "Blow your mind, you've got to be making this up kinda stuff". For instance, did you know that at 3,000 feet deep, even though it is too deep for sunlight to reach, it is not a pitch black void. It's more a twinkling lightshow similar to the densest lightening bug swarm you've ever seen. Also, the tiny hatchet fish has photocells on it's underside that has the ability to change color to perfectly match the color of the light above him rendering him invisible from below. It's a built in cloaking device.

The bad news is, at the depths I was planning for the game anything not flashing would be pitch black. Which wouldn't make for a very fun game. I really wanted to game to be covertly educational, showing the diverse wildlife of the deep and some of the cool features about those creatures, but it's hard to be educational and blow the creatures away at the same time. Something seems to get lost there.

Result: I'm going to have to take some pretty big creative liberties with the environment and the enemies, and find some way to work in the factoid elements (possibly on each loading screen).

I think I'm also going to assign Katie to factoid research and copyrighting, cause some of these things are too cool and something she needs to discover for herself.

Happy 2010!

So here we are at the beginning of a new year. Development is still moving along, slowly but moving none-the-less. And I continue to feel more familiar with C# and XNA as things progress. Recently in the XBox indie game library a company called Arkedo Studio has been releasing very well produced, high polish, yet relatively simple games. And I mean "simple" in the best way. The games are incredibly easy to pick up and play. Each has it's own cleverness and/or cuteness. And each has it's own look and feel, yet they all manage to maintain a 'family' style about them.

They are, in my opinion, some of the best, most professional games in the indie marketplace. They also are very limited in what they offer. There is no multiplayer, no save, no achievements or awards, and I have yet to see any kind of customization or personalization in the games. They are, in a way, a nod back to the 25 cent arcade days. Drop in a quarter, play till you die then start the thing all over again.

Of course, the down side to that approach (at least for the player) is they get very familiar with the beginning levels which they can grow tired of early. The up side is almost purely on the development side. It's a lot easier to develop a game when you don't have to worry about multiplayer, signing in, save points, etc.

Yet there are games, current games, that live almost entirely in the replayable world. The first that comes to mind is "Left 4 Dead". Sure, there's an initial exploration and discovery phase to the game the first couple of times through, but after that thanks to the dynamic in-game "director" the game retains a very high replay experience.

So, is there a way to combine the developmental efficiency of Arkedo Studio's "simple" approach with the dynamic replay value of Left 4 Dead? It might be a variation in weapons, ammo, level layout, depth (water), or a variety of other levers and switches