Author: Cody

This was rough week. Got menu system in. I’m rather pleased with it. Looks better than I thought. Was not able to get the pause screen in. I got the pause screen layout done in code but I will have to restructure some stuff because of how scene management and pausing the scene works (I didn’t really plan it into the design cause I didn’t know how it worked…). And while this update is a small list, it was a LOT of work.

• Added menu system. Tutorial Mode, Leaderboards, and SFX Volume currently do nothing. Everything else should be functional.
• Took out phone vibration when disc takes damage.

Feel like I’m in the final lap to make this thing actually feel like a game rather than a tech demo. Did a lot of minor gameplay polish and started working on wave progression. Luckily the infrastructure I laid out to plug in wave’s at various difficulty levels worked out. While it’s easy to plug in new wave algorithms, it take time to test/balance gameplay. S BAT 2 now has twelve different spawn patterns. Goal is to add a new spawn pattern a day while I continue to work on other features. I think I will shoot for 50 wave patterns for release. I thought at first I’d do 100, but then realized it takes longer to gameplay test/balance a wave than I thought.

Next release is the menu system.

• Now has twelve wave patterns that increase in difficulty as you play.
• If you do not clear the wave before time is up, then all towers will take damage.
• Now only takes three hits to take down a tower instead of five. Letting an emission hit a tower or failing to clear a wave does the same amount of damage. In other words, if you fail to clear three waves in a row or each tower gets hit three times by emissions, then you lose.
• Phone now vibrates when a tower takes damage.
• Added prototyped menu system that is going to get overhauled in the next release.
• Made touch area for movable disc bigger, so should be easier to interact with them.
• Pause now requires you to start and stop a touch on the pause button. Fixes issue where it was easy to unintentionally pause the game.
• Removed z axis animation on HUD (it was ugly…).
• Fixed typing animation so it no longer jitters (it was also ugly… only pretty people allowed in my game).
• Fixed z order drawing issue when emissions where spawning at the same time on top of each other.
• Polished up the background image.
• Moved the emission generator health bars inside instead of having them wrap around the outside.

Man, I really didn’t feel like I got much done this week, and then I wrote out that list… So I guess I did. This game is taking me forevar!

W00t, getting stuff done. I have to say, the music tracks are astounding! I think Langevin is still up in the air on if we will use the tracks as is or break them up and only use pieces of them. I could care less, cause either way, they will sound friggin’ fantastic!

Also started a twitter account if anyone is interested.

Started coding faster, so unfortunately, that means I’m getting a little more hacky. However, I’m pushing for actual deadlines now, which is good. Got HUD stuff done over this last week and will start working on the the difficulty curve and the wave patterns this week. Changes are below.

• Added HUD to top of screen that will animate in/out when you start/end the survival mode (only mode there is, haha).
• Score is now the proper font and animates in by typing. The typing is a little jittery so I need to see about polishing that later.
• Wave progression timer is to the right of the score (very please with how it came out).
• Added pause, just tap on the box at the top and it will pause the game. Music will continue to play. To resume, just tap the box again. Note that it does not retain it’s paused state when you close and re-open the app. Cocos2d is doing that, so I’ll need to make a work-around to save off the state and reset the it when you open the app.
• Added latest tracks from Langevin even though he asked me not to. And you know what? He can deal with it! Cause the tracks are awesome and I want to hear them in the game!

Slowly but surely getting stuff done. I’m gonna try to get back into doing weekly release cycle even if it is minor stuff. I’m slowly starting to pick pacing back up. Got emission factory artwork down and it’s spawn animation done. Noticed a few bugs with the pathing sprites. Goal is to wrap up emission factory artwork by labor day. We shall see what happens.

Still working on overhauling artwork. I went on hiatus for a while and started playing Dragon Age Origins. Finished artwork for the emissions. Did a little 2.5d stuff where the spawn in at a low z depth and shift along the z axis into the play field. Noticed some bugs with pathing and will start on the emission generator artwork next.

Well was hoping to be further along with the artwork, but taking a lot longer than I had hope. Art is hard… It is coming along nicely, just slowly. Also, getting some awesome music samples. This release has a final draft of “Welcome to Emission Control”. It’s pretty kick ass ^______^.

Hopefully by sunday I will have the emission’s done. I really just need to polish the pathing sprites, add spawn animation, and death animation. I might two death animations. One indicating that it hit the tower, and one that you killed it before you hit the tower. I’ll do one and see what people think first…

Got a lot of feedback from A-kon. Overhauled a bunch of stuff. Changes are below. I think it feels a little more focused now (or at least like it’s heading a certain direction in design). The feedback from A-kon helped me focus in and strip down a lot of stuff. I should start going out on the street and talking to strangers more often, cause it’s crazy helpful to get honest opinions about the game.

• Changed app name to S BAT 2 GXO: The OS.
• Added system for adding spawn patterns with ease (no longer randomly spawning enemies).
• Added a progression system to move from easier to harder spawn patterns.
• Added pattern timer to left of screen. Once the timer runs out, the pattern will clear and stage will go into a rest state. After the rest state, a new spawn pattern will spawn and the timer will reset.
• Added bonus if the player clears all soldier factories before the pattern timer runs out.
• Added score multipler for keeping laser towers alive. Each tower adds a x1 multiplier, so for example, if you have four towers left, then you have a x4 multiplier.
• Hitting an enemy with multiple lasers will now do more damage.
• Removed wally enemy type
• Added Pusher Soldier Factory which will spawn a soldier and then use a wall to push him.
• Added Barrier Soldier Factory which spawns barriers to protect itself from fire.
• Reduced color’s to three instead of four. Removed yellow color.
• Soldiers now phase more quickly and added fixes to make the phasing charge more accurate.
• Soldiers can no longer phase through a Pusher’s wall.
• Color selectors will now be deactivate when you drag the ship.
• Increased hit boxes on color selectors and bomb buttons to make them more user friendly.