Another LD under the belt. First, here’s your obligatory timelapse:
This one was a bit interesting, in that I usually finish the majority of the game by the end of Saturday, and get the Sunday time span to polish and tune. However, this time it was very down to the wire (as evidenced by the lack of a menu, or really much of anything in the UI department)
A lot of this ties back to my early decision to leverage BulletML instead of writing my own bullet code. This was a sensible option by any measure, and I stand by the decision; the bullet patterns would have been much less interesting without it. However, I’d never used it before and this ate up a lot of time while I tried to figure out the best way to interface with it.
The second issue was a lack of a clear direction with the narrative. I pulled a magic trick out of the hat literally an hour from submission and got it done, but I was heading into Sunday with little more than a flimsy arcade game with no end.
This was also a bit interesting in that it was my third shmup. I know it’s not exactly original to keep using the same type of game, but I find it rather interesting to reflect on how my approach changes each time I do it.
- I used much more interesting and complex enemy movement patterns this time. The actual levels consist of a pool of pattern loops that get interleaved and selected at random. This creates a much more structured level than previous approaches of just spawning random enemies at random locations.
- Enemy health and weapon patterns scale with level. This was made possible in part with the above pattern system, and in part with the magic of BulletML
- The core gameplay mechanic isn’t ripped off a game I’ve played before. This one is more of a personal victory than anything. Previously I ripped gameplay from Ikaruga, then the second attempt tried to adapt mechanics from EVE Online. Expando-ship is completly original, and actually went though a few iterations.
I also hate my art slightly less than usual. This was a “half cheat” in that I used other pixel art as reference and as a palette sample, though I made sure not to ever steal from the original work of copy sections 1:1. If you look at the art you’ll realize it’s bad enough that that excuse is easy to back up~
On the other hand, the music is especially bad. I tried using a new program this time, but I didn’t know it well enough and ended up making no progress, which quickly lead to frustration and me hammering out the simplest thing I could without wasting any more time.
Overall I’m pretty happy with the result. I enjoy playing it, and there’s a “true ending” that probably nobody will find.