Category: S BAT 2 GXO: TheOS

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.

Alpha v1.0 is here! And actually, this will probably be the last alpha build. Once I get one last major piece in, we will officially be in beta. Starting to brain storm names. Right now I’m thinking “S BAT 2 GXO: The OS”. Stands for Super Blue Alpha Turbo 2 Gaiden X Origins: The Omega Saga. Let me know what you think. I’ll probably be dropping the Prototype 03 naming convention on the next release. Also, I’m heading to A-Kon this weekend. I’m going to start showing off the S BAT 2 GXO: The OS and see if I can get some useful feedback. As always, changes are listed below.

• New/updated artwork added from Stark Design.
• Code cleanup and performance tweak for wall enemy.
• Resolved issue where walls could spawn on top of each other and get hung up.
• Nerfed spawn algorithm so enemies don’t spawn as quickly.
• Bomb’s are now generated more quickly.
• Laser towers will now be destroyed if two soldiers hit them (changed from ten).
• Fixed issue where the beams would sometimes not load and appear as a solid white texture.
• Fixed issue where selectors would stay on the screen after a game ended.
• Fixed issue where bomb progress bars would not reset after a game ended.

Added new awesome bomb feature!

• New bomb feature.
• Bombs will charge by killing enemies. Bombs can continue to be charge while they are in use.
• Bombs are activated by tapping one of the four bomb buttons at the bottom. Bomb must be charged to be able to activate. The indicators will light up when the bomb can be used
• Bombs work more as a power up. When a bomb is active, the player ships will instanta kill any enemy it touches. The enemy must be the same color of the bomb that is active.
• Multiple bombs can be activate at the same time
• Performance tweaks to spawn algorithm

This is the soldier phasing update. I kind of like it so far, it was a quick fix to the design flaw where a player could block indefinitely. Timings for phasing and animations are all works in progress.

• Added soldier ability to phase out to get around obstacles.
• Soldiers will charge up their phase ability when they are being blocked by an object. You can tell the level of charge by how much the jitter.
• Once soldier is fully charged, they will phase out. When phased, they can still be harmed by lasers and will still hurt laser towers, but they will pass through any obstacle.
• Soldiers will exit the phase state after a set amount of time and as long as they are no longer colliding with any objects.
• The charge also has a cool down.

Pretty minor update. Mainly cleaning up few small bugs here and there.

• Rewrote the color selector logic so now it works properly with Brian’s artwork.
• Resized spawn grid so it is now properly centered.
• Fixed rotation problem with the soldier factories, they should now face the correct way.
• Fixed rotation on laser towers so now they match what Brian initially planned.
• Added in Z ordering defines to make it easier to track z order of sprites.