AYUSSHMUP Devlog #4 - "Weapons"
Hey everyone! Now, I know I said I'd put a screenshot in this blog, and I'm sorry, but I was so busy actually programming the game that I had no time to take and PNGify a screenshot. I planned to, I really did, but then it was too late. Sorry.
Hopefully I'll have a screenshot in tomorrow's devlog. Hopefully.
Prologue
Today, seeing as I'm going iceskating with friends from 8 to who-knows-when, I'm going to be focusing on weapons, as many of them will be easy to add, as I'll just need to change some values.
Chances are I won't get time to put all the weapons listed below in, but I'll try.
Chapter 1 - "Primary"
Primary weapons are what you'll use most of the time. They are the bullets (or cockpits, rather XD) that stream from your ship's nose.
To mix things up a little, I've given the primary weapons Half-Life 2 vehicle-type ammo. That is, they start with about 100 ammo, but it recharges, at a speed depending on whether they're firing or not.
Here's what I've got so far:
* Machinegun. It fires bullet after bullet in rapid succession, but does very low damage per bullet. Perhaps I should add a bit of inaccuracy here…
* Cannon. Doesn't fire as fast as the machine gun, but does twice/thrice (still deciding) the damage.
* Laser. Does more damage than the cannon, but fires slow bullets at a low fire rate.
* Double Machinegun. Two machine guns. Be careful though, you've still only got 100 ammo.
* Double Cannon.
* Double Laser.
Yeah, I know, the bottom few are cop-outs. Sue me.
Chapter 2 - "Secondary"
The secondary weapons are a lot more interesting than the primary ones, and will therefore take longer to implement, so don't count on seeing ALL of them in the demo. They have a very small ammo supply that doesn't recharge, because that would unbalance the game.
All of these (expect maybe the rockets, but those are lame) were ESA's ideas. Give him a hand!
* Rockets. Fires lethal projectiles. Similar to a primary weapon.
* Obliterator. Railgun. Fires a beam across the screen, destroying most things in its path.
* Dual bombs. Two bombs, attached to each other.
Double the devastation. The rope between them should probably be flexible, not rigid, to make things better. Well, I'll see if I can do that.
* Sentinel launcher. Fires miniships that attack the enemy.
*Electrocutor. Fires discs that cause havoc with their targets' circuitry, causing them to lose control and crash into other ships, dealing appropriate damage.
All those weapons are sounding pretty cool. Too bad not many of them are implemented. ='(. Better get down to doing that…
Chapter 3 - "Goals"
After completing Tuesday's goals, I fiddled with the background. My fiddling was futile until serprex gave me some advice. Now I need to use that advice.
Goals For Today
* Implement all unimplemented primary weapons. The only actual coding I'll have to do here is the coding that'll allow double weapons to fire from the right positions
* Implement as many unimplemented secondary weapons as possible. I'll try my hardest, with the time available.
* Make animating background. This has been relegated to low priority after ESA informed me that he was making tiles. Artists… =D.
Epilogue
Suggestions for weapons are greatly appreciated, and will give you special thanks in the credits, along with serprex, RawrSpoon, Bryan etc…
Bye for now, and let's hope I can do this!
F1ak3r
Since when is the speed of light slower than the speed of sound?
A slow firing laser is BLASPHEMY!Make it possible to mix primaries, but each weapon with an ammo supply that's halved, that way it's balanced. Since the laser has such a low firing speed, make the contact instantanious, and actually, instead of reload, a charge time, which would make it much more balanced.Those are my two centsLaser should be like machine gun, except have a straight line with firing instead of the curvy line that a machine gun would have. Perhaps you should make laser give more damage when near the victim?
Also, a big thing you're not covering: Score. Chain systems are a must if you want an optional challenge to the player that gives the gameplay a sense of depthSo instead of recycling you don't give us an image at all :(?
@RawrSpoon: That's true, as I realized later today. Maybe I should swap the laser and cannon names around or something.
I like the mixing idea very much. I'm definitely doing that. Maybe there could be three weapon slots, one in front, and one on each wing. And then, perhaps, you'll be able to put three primaries on at a time.Thanks, I really appreciate your input.@serprex: Yeah, that makes sense. Lasers straight, machinegun bullets erratic.Scoring! Of course! *slaps forhead* I knew there was something! I'm thinking of having a chain system, yeah, probably something similar to Raging Skies's combo bar, but more difficult to fill up, as this game has about 20 times the enemies-on-screen-at-any-given-time as Raging Skies does. More about that tomorrow.@Bryan: Yep. Pretty much. Again, sorry. I'll DEFINITELY put a screenshot on tomorrow's devlog, even if I have to write it later on in the day than what I usually do.