- I've added an experimental new element of the game call "heat" as a way to prevent capacity discharge spamming. This also allows a new minor dimension of gameplay, hopefully without adding too much complexity and confusion.
- Getting hit by enemy projectiles, using capacity discharge abilities, and dashing all increase heat.
- If the heat meter is full, you can no longer dash or use your capacity discharge abilities. Heat automatically decreases with time. The amount of heat that you gain and how quickly it leaves will likely need to be tweaked for quite a while to get it right.
- The heat element of the game allows for new enemies and situations that can't kill you but instead cripple your abilities by heating your ship.
- In addition to the regular heat and capacity gages, much taller versions have been added to the left and right peripheral edges of the screen for clear visibility during play.
- The dash is no longer a transient effect but is active as long as you hold the dash button, increasing movement speed twofold.
- The dash effect is now using the trail renderer at various areas of the ship. This gives a nice streak look.
- At some point, I stopped testing with my keyboard controls and had only been using my gamepad. I must have changed the controls for dash and capacity discharge abilities. They have since been remapped to [Left Shift] and [Space], respectively.
- Input lag issue has been rectified. I was emulating an analog joystick with digital keys by tweening vector values between [-1,+1] over time. I'm still emulating the analog input, but the sensitivity has been amped way up so it effectively never touches the values between -1, 0, and +1. I'm keeping this in simply for the onscreen Android joystick controls.
- We're transitioning into 3D backgrounds which will allow more flexibility in the design of the environment since we can repeat assets in a more non-patterned way, making them look better without using much more memory (if done correctly). The background in the screenshot is quite ugly, but it's programmer art made in Google SketchUp. Expect better background assets in future builds.
- The "spin shot" feature has been removed since it seemed like a pretty obscure ability anyhow. It may come back later on, but for now it's on the cutting board.
To do (programming):
- Add a continue screen for when you run out of credits. I haven't been very clear to all the beta testers that the "I" key will give you more credits. "I" is not a very obvious key to choose, but it still works for now.
- Come up with a way of chunking the 3D background objects in a more discreet way so that it can be varied more easily and efficiently.
- Create a new between-level map screen that better reflects our new vision for the game.
- Test out a Linux version of the demo.
- Create a placeholder enemy that uses a flame weapon to impact the player's heat.
