AYUSSHMUP Daily Devlog #1 - "Introduction"

Hey, hey everybody. Remember my Nebraska Newton devlogs, the series of 10 daily progress-tracking-and-planning blogs I wrote in April? Well, they were such a help last time, that I've decided to start a new series.

This time, there are only going to be five devlogs, one for every weekday of this coming week. Then, on Sunday, I'll release the first demo.

Prologue

So, AYUSSHMUP is the new SHMUP game ESA and I are working on. For those who don't know, AYUSSHMUP stands for As Yet Unnamed Space Shoot 'Em Up, and it's a temporary name. I am rather fond of it though, but it's difficult to remember, so we'll definitely be renaming it once inspiration finally comes.

Chapter 1 - "Quadrangles"

As you can see from the above screenshot, AYUSSHMUP's background consists of an arrangement of variously shaded purple rectangles.

Now, as of the screenshot, this was a static arrangement, and the background was unchanging. However, serprex had the awesome idea of having the background procedurally generated, and I decided to try it out.

So far, I've done okay, but the background generator needs a lot of work. The rectangles often overlap, and the method of making many different 64*48 surfaces and then tiling them over a 640*480 surface to make the background has made everything horribly samey.

To remedy this, I want to stick a few 128*48 and 64*96 surfaces in places on the background. It won't make it look like ESA's artful arrangment, but it'll improve it.

On a deeper level, I need to give the surfaces more possibilities. At the moment, all surfaces consist of a similar pattern in which there is only one of each colour quadrangle. I need to make creating more quadrangles a possibility, as ESA's background, if you'll notice, had that in abundance.

Chapter 2 - "HUD"

Pay special attention to the HUD in that image. Then look up at the last screenshot, and compare. Yeah. Sometimes I wish ESA wasn't such a perfectionist =D.

But I digress. Putting in the new HUD shan't be difficult, even though I'll have to change my bar-displaying method, due to the top and bottom bars on the new HUD.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but that HUD does look as if it's supposed to go at the top of the screen, doesn't it? If so, good, it'll make the play area bigger.

Chapter 3 - "Goals"

Now for the most useful part of a devlog - the goals! With Nebraska Newton, this section really helped give me the purpose and motivation needed to accomplish things.

* Make background generator decent. I want the background generator to make things that look at least vaguely similar to ESA's background.

* Implement the new HUD. Wow, this is gonna take hours =D.

Epilogue

So there you have it, another daily devlog, and the beginning of a series. Expect to see screens of AYUSSHMUP's new look in tomorrow's devlog, as Opera Mini has gained uploading abilities since last I devlogged.

F1ak3r