Still not quite there. Got a LOT done in the last 4 days though. Starting to hit the compression limit in pico8, so that's becoming a bit of a challenge.
New stuff done so far over the last 4 days:
Basic map generation, power up spawns, a new enemy that shoots, lots of optimization and rewriting of code. Escape sequence mode, timer for mission times, percentage of pickups obtained in a run, password seed entry, title screen, conclusion screen showing final results (win, lost, with percent pickups and mission time totals). 3 alternate guns, currently they just deal more damage, but they are functional at least. Enemies now collide with the player for damage, set per enemy. Player now dies. Heat damage on the "hot" world if not in an elevator or power up room. Energy tank system, player health. Jump boost power ups. Final container pickup (little green metroid like jar)
About a billion other minor 10 second fixes and tweaks throughout as I went.
It's easier to say what's left to squeeze in then what's new in the game at this point, so I'll just go with that. I'll try to get the game stable for a preview build tomorrow, time allowing.
Left to do:
- fitting more enemies into the game. Only 2 gets really old.
- getting ammo/health drops working.
- get a final boss in place. If I can't squeeze one in, it might do just to have the capsule on the last floor and consider being able to fight down there the game end. But I'd really like to do a cool boss fight of some sort that needs the 4 weapons.
- work on spreading out the power ups so they are not on just the first floor, cause that's LAME.
- spread out/theme the enemy encounters to each area, so the areas all have their own "tricks" to learn.
- more sound and music effects so all areas at least have music, plus escape sequence music is needed too.
- balance the enemy/player advancement to make the game fair/fun without being too easy/hard.
- cap the player ammos and health tanks to prevent overflows of the UI.
Nice to haves at this point due mostly to cart compression limits:
- Charged shots, with an alternate firing effect for each gun. Would help them to be a bit more unique instead of just damage/ammo choices.
- more room layouts, types, variety of room terrain generation methods. Each new type is several new tokens of memory. Most of these tokens are going to be used for the AI, so I'm not sure I can afford to be as crazy as I'd like with room chunk gen. I might be able to cheese it by using "middle" chunks in the normal rooms.
- Room doors. Yes, I'm totally serious. I still don't have doors that need weapons cause I'm silly and forgot they exist. And I'm almost out of memory. The AI routines and final boss logic will probably eat the rest of the space. Gonna have to get really sneaky/creative to get them in. At minimum I suppose the boss door at least will need to lock somehow. Barring any implementation, I could always hope the enemies do their job of "gating" the player to their current combat level at least. This would not be ideal or make the player sometimes change route, so I hope I can find a way to squeeze real doors in.
- Possibly make elevators break during escape so there is extra platforming, or give the generator a way to create an "alternate route" exit, metroid 2 style. Problem here is not overwriting the old map and not making a "shortcut".
- Ideally the map would create a few unexpected horizontal shaft connections to keep the player exploring more then just left and right. Realistically, this most likely won't happen due to pico8's compression limits without some tricks that are way beyond my level of coding skill. Alas, probably a cutting room item at this point.
And here we go. Let's see if I can pull this hack job into a game yet.
On release or submission end (whatever happens first), I'll be happy to share the source p8 cart on the download page, in the spirit of Pico8. That way you all can examine and learn from it, or hack it to bits and prove you are all better then me at using the cart space. :p