loomsoft.net

There is not a lot of progress to report at this time. Instead of solely stating that I haven't done very much in terms of the current project, I think I will recap on its current status.

As of this point in time the main issue I need to tackle next is implementing basic AI for every single enemy class. About half of them are complete. Instead of going through the long process of creating individual sprites for every enemy I opted to use a basic template and simply change the base color of the sprite. In doing so I'll be able to save myself a lot of time in the long run. What I plan on doing is finding a talented pixel artist who is interested in the project to create some wonderful sprites. Once this happens, I will have to retool a lot of code to implement bounding boxes for, say punching, to work correctly. So instead of meticulously creating sprites and mapping bounding boxes to them, I'm using a standard animation and bounding box sequence for every enemy that has a punching attack. The same will be done for all other types of generic attacks that more than one enemy type may share. Eventually, even though two different enemies might have a basic punching attack, the swing and arc of those punches will be different since the enemies are of different size. What I am aiming for is a "same attack" that is also at the same time "unique" to that enemy.

Once all of that is done, the enemies will essentially be complete, save balancing issues. Balancing the game is something that I really want to nail down. I'd like it to be challenging yet, at the same time, not extremely difficult. Since the gameplay mechanic will essentially allow the player to play "forever," a scoring system and highest level reached are the only markers of how well the game is being played. I will be doing a lot more thinking about how the scoring will work in order to make it fair and fun. Things like what the current level is, current difficulty of the enemies are and such will all have to be factored in fairly. Another aspect of the game that ties in fairly well with how scoring works is the combination system. As I have mentioned before, the game will feature a "combo" system which will allow the player to alter the gameplay more to his or her advantage. Balancing these out is going to take a lot of work as well. Simple combinations should not be hard to execute, therefore they cannot be incredibly "powerful." Large combos, however, require a lot of work and setup for the player, and thus should be greatly rewarding. One problem with this setup is that it is entirely possible to achieve large combos simply by chance and circumstance without actively thinking about setting them up.

That's mostly it for gameplay mechanics. Other things still in the works are a proper high score saving/loading/viewing system, proper options screen, filling out the "dictionary" data (see previous posts for more information on the dictionary functionality), and ultimately, adding in the bonus mode for the game that doesn't feature enemies.

There's a lot of work ahead of me, but I have a clear path of what order things need to be done in and, when on piece is done I know where to go next. I have been contemplating whether or not I should do a call for pixel artists at this point, and I'm still undecided on the issue. I'd like the game to be playable in a state where all the enemies are complete (with generic graphics) and the scoring system is relatively balanced. What I preferably want is a playable, almost-complete, ugly looking version of the game that an artist can play around with and decide for themselves whether they would like to spend the time to help out or not.