1 JUN 2024:
- Made some good progress on the AI this week. In the picture above you can see the player engaging a bunch of different enemies, including a battleship. There is a nice sense of unpredictability as to which enemy will show up next.
The game handles the smaller enemies well enough, but I am noticing lag once the battleship (or any larger enemy) goes active. So to fix that, I'll have to find ways to trim down image sizes (most likely the level backgrounds) and/or spawn larger enemies when there isn't much activity going on. It's a balancing act between fps and difficulty.
Right now the logic goes something like this: Every time an enemy goes active, the spawn timer increases. Every time an enemy goes inactive by being destroyed or going off screen, the spawn timer decreases. Then on top of this there is a calculation based on how much damage the player has sustained. The game gets a little easier the more damage you take.
- I changed the outline of the scrap to red instead of green. My reasoning for this is because scrap can damage you and green almost invites the player to fly into it! So instead I tried a red outline, which communicates the dangerous aspect of the scrap better, but admittedly doesn't have quite the color contrast as green did. I probably just need to thicken the outline a little and it should be ok.
- Battleships can now flank the player if there is more than one. This also prevents the battleships from spawning on top of or too close to each other.
- Fixed some more game freezing bugs involving shield fighters and bombers. Every now and then I'll see some other bugs but I'm not going to worry about them too much unless they actually cause the game to freeze or crash.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
"Challenge yourself; it's the only path which leads to growth." -- Morgan Freeman
Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!