I love having productive weeks, and this was once again a very productive one.
I started working on the animations, as with my other games I try to build them from game-elements only. So all the characters are based on the player, just controlled by the animation code, and the various items are just placements as if they are in the game. It’s a pretty quick way to get some nice animations going without adding a lot of extra code.
I also added the Datacards and CPU’s. You will find the datacards floating around, and when you have one you’ll have to find a working CPU and see what’s on the datacard. Right now they are only used to give information on the various creatures and robots with some hints here and there, but I might add a few other ones with back-story or maybe even some hack-code to disable various robots in a level.
Of course I’ve also been adding various items and improving the weapons, which is something I plan to be doing until the game is released.
One of the bigger tasks this week was getting the secret-area’s working. And it actually proved to be not as difficult as I thought! It did mean I had to dig back into my level-generator (and that’s some of the harder code I have in the game) and make sure nothing got broken in the process.
Right now there’s just one type of secret-area, and if you find it you can go in by blowing out the wall.. but I plan to add some other type of secret area’s where you need some sort of alien artifact to open the wall/door. As with most code in this game, once the core is working it’s pretty easy to expand it into different use-cases.
Finally I added a fun little alien-parasite-worm creature. It mostly shows up in the early levels, and even tho it’s very easy to get rid of (shoot once) I did find myself thinking more about my steps, because once you step next to a worm, it will cling on to you and suck 1HP for 3 turns.. so those small worms can quickly become your death if you don’t watch out.
I’ll probably add a bigger version of the worm for later levels, making it suck more HP or last longer.
And to keep the system in balance, I’ll now have to come up with an item to counter the worms, any ideas are welcome in the comments! ;)
Besides my own progress, there’s finally some decision made on the music style, and Gavin should once again be the man that will bring some awesome background music to it.. and it won’t be chiptune this time!
Scott has been working on some cool promotional art, which I hopefully be able to use all over the www.SpaceGrunts.com website and Steam pages very soon!
So what more would you like to see in the game? would love to hear thoughts, so leave it in the comments!
