Day
Sorry for not updating in two days, I've been busy. Yesterday I made a ton of progress on Flappy Shmup, so let's take a look at that.
You know how in Tetris, when you clear a certain amount of lines, you go up one level and the game gets faster? Well, I did something similar with Flappy Shmup. For every 6 pipes you pass by, you'll go up one level. The game will get faster and faster each level until you hit level 4, which is as fast as the game will get.
There are six levels total: Level 0, Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, Level 4, Level 5. Each level has a different vaporwave style background, and the background shown in the previous posts is now just the background for Level 0.
I also implemented a text object that will display a random tip when you die, from a selection of six. One of these tips reads: "Something is waiting for you at level 5...", which is a pretty important detail. I'll get to that later, though.
Another thing I did was tweak the enemies a bit. Red was weak compared to Purple and Blue, and also kind of boring to fight, since Red didn't have a special quality like Purples tankyness or Blue's speed. Red now fires two bullets in quick succession instead of just one, which should make Red a more interesting enemy to fight. I also slightly nerfed Purple and Blue, since they were a bit too strong.
Flappy Shmup also has music now! The song Rhinoceros by Kevin MacLeod is the main theme that plays throughout most of the game:
and the song that plays in the Game Over screen is Game Over from Galaga '88:
I'm not sure what song I'll have in Level 5 yet, but right now I've put in King Galaspark from Galaga Arrangement as temp music:
Speaking of Level 5, I guess I should explain what that thing I mentioned earlier is.
Take a look:
I apologize for the crappy phone recording, but it's either that or a GIF at 5 fps.
Anyway, this is Big Green. He's the boss of Flappy Shmup, and I think you can see why. He's big, can take a ton of punishment (you can see how much health he has in the bottom right corner), and shoots a bullet every two seconds. As he loses health, he'll start to shoot them faster, up to a maximum fire rate of one bullet every 1.2 seconds.
Once you take down Big Green, you'll enter Level Extra, an extra level which lasts forever until you die. Dying in Level Extra changes the message at the top of the Game Over screen from "Game Over" to "Thanks for playing!". I wan't to keep what Level Extra looks like a secret, so I won't show it here.
Now that Big Green and Level Extra are implemented, I think the game is done. Right now, I'm just playtesting it as much as I can to see if there are any bugs and to make sure the game is possible to beat. The only major features I haven't implemented yet are:
- Saving your high score after you've exited the game, and an option to reset it
- Volume slider
I tried adding a volume slider before, but I failed horribly. I also have no idea how saving works. But there are 5 days left, so I think what I'll do is submit the game later today and then work on those features. I'll update this devlog once the game is submitted.