Little Steps
In mid-December, I started putting in code to support multi-object enemies (hosts and sub-modules, in my terminology). My goal was to build some procedurally-created asterdroids with armour plates, shield modules, and eventually guns as the first part of this project, but mid-December got hairy (as it does), and then I failed to return to the code, so the vision got stale. I’d like to get back to it soon, but I’d also like to not let the whole game get mothballed, so I’ve pushed the framework I built and have moved on for the moment, hopefully until I get a bit more momentum.
Speaking of which, I wanted to implement some micro-cores that zip around at a constant speed, but attract each other at a certain threshold, so they’ll do gravitational sling-shots and be an attractive pain to deal with. I want to see if I can implement a blur-effect on objects moving faster than their target speed, which I think will look good. And, I’d like these spheres to ricochet off each other if they manage to come in contact, making a tink noise and possibly some pretty particles. Sprites’re done and imported.
If I like these, I miiiight implement coloured versions with shorter-range beam attacks similar to their original counterparts.
Next step: build the actual enemy object and make it do those things!
P.S.: I also nerfed Mega Cluster a bit. Now, none of the spooted asteroids are void persistent (they still need to be carefully avoided when ejected—they just don’t gum up the works as much), and the ejecta-novas fired when damage thresholds are reached only have a 50% chance of being void persistent. Seemed like if I couldn’t beat the thing persistently, it might’ve been too difficult…