Zeemote Shooter

I've all (I think) of the commenting done on the puzzle game and now I'm trying to get a hold of a friend to possibly do some sound effects for it. Other than that, I've been working on the scrolling shooter a little bit. Mostly minor tweaks not worth mentioning, but also one big addition: Zeemote Support. Several months ago I bought a Zeemote JS1 Controller for the express purpose of adding support for it in my scrolling shooter. I was working on so many more important gameplay issues that I never got around to it, but I recently remembered my initial plan and started looking into it. Thankfully, the Zeemote is actually really easy to get started integrating and it didn't take an crazy amount of time to get it going.

I've added an option on the settings page to enable support of Zeemote bluetooth controllers. It required a little bit of refactoring, but its all set up. You use the joystick to move obviously, and either of the 2 front buttons to shoot. You can hold down the fire button to have it shoot continuously like it does in the normal touch mode, or you can actually wait and time your shots. In that respect, the Zeemote actually gives you an advantage, but, for me at least, the joystick also makes it harder to dodge bullets, although it is quite fun. You can't rapidly tap the fire button to shoot faster than normal though. You'll still have the same "attack speed" as a player not using the Zeemote. This just gives you a lot more control over when the bullet actually fires. I think its a fair trade off. I'm really happy with how its working out and I think its a great option to have in the game.

Puzzle Game Commenting

All the functions of my puzzle game are pretty much done. Now I just want to get it all commented up, but that task is easier said than done. With the recent refactoring of the main game activity and the major overhaul of my story page, there is a lot of new code to document. It needs to be done though. Just good practice and really helpful in the future if I need to update anything. It's a bit daunting though.

Flamethrowers and Fireballs

Level 10. The final level in the scrolling shooter game. This level is all about fire shooting drones. The two classes of minions are just named after their weapon type: the Flamethrower and the Fireball. The Flamethrower class does what you would think and shoots a flamethrower bullet out in front of it. Unlike other minion types the "flame" moves with minion as it flies around the screen. After a couple seconds, the flame is then shot down the screen like a normal projectile. The second class is the Fireball minion. These guys shoot bullets in a fairly normal fashion, except their projectile is a ball shape instead of the thinner rectangular shape other bullets are. Additionally, the fireball grows as it moves down the screen so they are pretty hard to dodge when they get near the bottom.

Refactoring and Multiplayer Possibilities

Been working on my puzzle game lately. Changed up the story page a bit and it is working real well. I took out the previous/next buttons the player was supposed to use to navigate the map, and now your player sprite slides to the level you click on, following the path on the screen. It's working really well. I also did a major refactor on some of the main game activity to incorporate some swipe detection. There is some stuff where I had it set up to just rotate 90 degrees on every click, but I found that it wasn't super intuitive for players, so now if you swipe in a direction things will get rotated in that direction. I also left in the clicking to rotate it 90 degrees though so I personally don't have to relearn the controls. You have both options and the player can go with what they prefer.

I've also been reconsidering working on my zombie maze game. I had some issues with it before that made me put it on the back burner, but now I have a few more ideas of how to go about things. In addition, Google just recently came out with a real time multiplayer API where they do a lot of the heavy lifting for you. They do some quick matching and connection stuff and apparently you just have to format the info you are going to send. It occurs to me that the maze game would be a great candidate for having a 2 player cooperative mode. I might play around with some of the multiplayer stuff a little but I don't think I'll be focusing on it any time soon. I got this puzzle game nearing 100% completion and my scrolling shooter is almost finished too, so now is not the best time to be jumping on to a new big project, but the possibilities this multiplayer API presents are too good not to at least look into.

Dragons!

Level 9 of my scrolling shooter consists of the inevitable dragon minions. Hopefully, when there are some better graphics in the game, they will be pretty cool looking, but for now they are lizards with semi circle wings. The two dragon minion these: the guardian class the dragonfire class. The guardian minions are orange, and they shoot normal bullets (nothing special about them) but, unlike every other minion type in the game, they take two hits to kill. The first hit will turn the guardian a deeper red color, similar to how the player turns red for a second when they get hit, only the guardian doesn't change back. Once they are red, if they get hit again they are killed. So, they are basically a normal minion with a little more beef. The second class, the dragonfire, is a green dragon. The unique thing about these guys is that they shoot 2 bullets straight down, but one of them is at a much slower speed than the other, so when there are a few of them on the screen at once, you get a hard-to-dodge wall of bullets. Neither of these minion types are quite as exciting as some of the ones from previous levels, but they are actually pretty hard to deal with.

Puzzle Game Story Mode

For the last year, the story activity in my puzzle game was just a little slideshow the player could flip through to get the little back story that I made up for the game's visual setting. It was pretty lame and kind of misleading since when people see "story modes" they generally think there is going to be some sort of level setup and not just a couple images explaining things. So, I went back and I significantly expanded the story mode. Now there are 10 levels the player can play, each with a specific game mode and a target score. If the player beats the target score, they pass the level and can move on to the next. I've made it so that initially, only "Classic Mode" is available in the game through the normal play menu. By beating a certain levels in story, you gain access to the other game types. Beating all of the 10 levels awards you with a Scoreloop achievement.

Using some of the path modifier stuff I've learned by working on my scrolling shooter, I've made a cool little navigation setup. It's kind of like moving around levels in Super Mario Bros. in that you have a little player sprite, and going in the direction of the next level moves the sprite to the next level area and the camera follows. To explain the story, I still have something similar to the "slideshow" I mention previously, but now that is brought up on the screen by tapping a little circle with an "i" in it, which is a common symbol for 'additional information'. You flip through the slideshow using the same previous/next buttons that you use to move your character through the level. It still isn't the greatest way to get story elements across to the player, but the 10 challenge levels is something that I'm really happy about adding to the game.

Genies and Tornadoes

Back to my scrolling shooter. After my brother suggested a level with Genie characters, I came up with what is currently Level 8. As always, there are two minion classes, both genies, and they shoot tornadoes in different ways. The Cyclone class shoots a tornado straight down, similar to many other minions in the game, but once it reaches a certain distance from its origin point, it breaks into 2 tornadoes that go off at different angles. Its kind of a mix of bullet behaviors from previous levels. The second class of minion on this level is the Seeker class. The tornado bullets they shoot actually have decent homing capabilities. They will travel down the screen at a set speed, but will change direction horizontally to go towards the player. This results in the player often needing to move up the screen to get the bullets behind them. It can be pretty challenging if you don't clear the seeker minions out fast enough. Below are some screenshots of my beautiful genie minions and yet another boring placeholder background (the tan triangles are supposed to be something akin to a tornado or dust devil).