Progress Update 6

Quite a few changes have been made, lessons learned, and new goals since the last update so let's get started.

Graphics:

• New placeholder ships and 3D background are being used. It's good to change the scenery every once in a while.
• New HUD in place that uses "bump" mapping, also known as normal mapping which creates the illusion of geometrically occluded lighting on a flat surface. Suffice to say, it makes the HUD look really cool when lit up.

Lessons Learned:

I found a neat website called shmup-dev.com where a lot of shmup game developers and hardcore shmup players frequently discuss the genre at large. I picked up a lot of information from their forums about what is regarded good qualities of a vertical shoot'em-up game.

• The player is powerful, yet fragile.  This is important. In the pre-alpha demos thus far, the player can absorb as many as 10 yellow shots before dying. This has been reduced to 3, but the player's weapons now do more damage.
• The controls must be very precise. This was a weakness in previous versions while I was poorly emulating analog input. This was mostly fixed in the previous progress update but I've also fixed a problem which allowed you to move faster diagonally that you can on either axis alone by clamping the movement velocity vector to between 0 and the "playerSpeed" value.
• Scoring mechanics are extremely important for repeat play. Many people play arcade games for fast fun with little time commitment. Those who excel take notice of their score and try to maximize it. Good scoring mechanisms create the hook necessary to maintain the player's interest in score building.
• "Popcorn" enemies should be abundant in each wave of bad guys to create that satisfying "crunch" and constant sense of destruction for the player. Having easy to kill enemies makes the experience more rewarding between destroying the harder guys. Even when you miss the bigger guys, you at least sometimes get a lucky kill on one of the little guys and that creates a sort of random reward schedule for some players.
• Needs to be simple enough to learn in a moment, yet complex enough to stay interesting. I think the premise of Aggressor fits this description, but I don't think its been very effectively communicated. To help this, I've created a Tutorial level and changed the term "Capacity" to "Energy" which is a concept that more people are surely familiar with. I've also changed the graphics of the enemies' projectiles to have subtle cues of their effects by indicating a "plus" or "negative" sign with the light flare on them. Hopefully some will see this as "yellow adds energy and red subtracts energy," but you never know...  Also, the orange enemy projectile has a circular flare as to denote "zero energy" and the heat meter color has been changed to orange.

Bugs Fixed:

Too many to mention. Thanks to all of you who have played the demos and posted feedback on found bugs and errors. This helps me out tremendously! 

Goals Set For Next Demo Release:

• Need at least two levels complete with a prototype score screen segueing between them.
• Two new bosses for these levels. I'm thinking that the boss from the previous demos will be used for the third level and these new bosses will be much more straight forward and easier.
• Need a tutorial level (already done) to help demonstrate the premise of the game. 

I hope to accomplish all this within the next two weeks.

Best laid schemes...