Hey all,
Thanks to Sined for putting the word out there. Appreciate the enthusiasm and following you've been showing.
So for anyone wondering what the plan is for these shmups we'll be putting out, the first game released (Chronoblast) is going to be a very retro looking shmup - it's taken a long time to actually get to this point due to people being busy and pretty much everything (including the tilesets!) being hand drawn pixel by pixel.
Features I've put in over the last few days:
* Tate mode! - Yep, if you've got a swivel monitor you can rotate and scale that game area the way you'd like it.
* Hyper system to compliment scoring
There's a few performance optimisations to be taken care of before I can release this game - there are some parts that I'm just not entirely happy with, but that'll all be done before release.
As for scoring in the game, just thought I'd give you guys a little heads up as to how the game works.
You have a choice of 3 characters using the standard colours, Blue (shot focussed), Green (Laser Focussed), Red (Balanced)
Each character has the ability to fire a shot, or your standard laser. We had the standard 'hold A to fire beam' mechanic in there, however I made a decision over the last couple of days to strip that out in favour of a separate button for the laser. So the game plays with the following buttons:
A,B,C,D
A = Laser
B = Bomb/Hyper
C = Shot
D = Toggle fire mode
Here's where things get a little tricksy - toggling your fire mode will allow you to fire in a powered up state. Your laser becomes stronger and the way your shot behaves is drastically different.
Blue gets a wider spread
Green gets controllable left/right guns
Red is unique in that it fires a laser whilst being able to control the side guns and fire both simultaneously.
This is the part I want your guys feedback on:
In this alternate fire mode, each enemy you kill will release more bullets - however you fill your hyper meter at a quicker rate. Upon entering hyper, all bullets on screen are converted to gold. During hyper, the release of bullets continues. You can cancel out of hyper converting all on screen bullets to gold - however this consumes any hyper meter that you've gained while your hyper is active. This encourages players to endure the onslaught of bullets during hyper mode, so that they can re-enter a brand new fresh hyper state and convert all those generated bullets in to gold. A nice risk/reward mechanic.
Hyper does of course build faster while you're chaining.
Phew, that was a lot to type - hope it gives you a snippit of how much I'm trying to put in to this. I just hope it delivers! If not - well, your support and feedback will make sure that future patches and releases do hit the spot!
Cheers!
Steve
| My games - http://www.emphatic.se
