Purdy Patterns

Posted by oddbob on March 11, 2007 · Lovingly Filed Under Personal 
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Ooh, I’ve actually been working on Beast Invaders 3 a fair bit, enough so as to actually forget to blog my progress. So here goes…

Right, we actually have a vague idea of a plot - not that you really need a plot to play the game, but y’know, gives me something to mull over when my fingers are plotting pixels in ProMotion. Roughly, the concept is thus: Aliens have been kidnapping sheep and fusing them to killing machines and are doing really bad things. Yes, thats it - think taunting your pet rabbit or something and you’re at least halfway there. Bad things. Ok, ok, thats actually as far as I’ve got. Shoot down the machines, rescue the sheep and Bobs not your uncle because if I am, then there’s something somebody hasn’t told me down the line.

So, thats that out the way. Abominable plot aside, what we’ve got so far is a vertical scrolling shmup with an ever so slight leaning towards the bullet hell side of things. It aint arf bad either, to tell you the truth. But there’s something missing right now that I’m trying to put my finger on. Its so very, very nearly there and nearly right - but with that sort of intangible something to elevate it from good to great.
At the moment, I’m erring towards the rigidity of the wave structure and design being the stumbling block, it doesn’t so much flow as feels incredibly mechanical in the delivery - everything occurs at precise moments in very tight patterns. Its very much a learning exercise first, and whilst certainly fun - it could do with everything being allowed to flow a bit more to allow the player to develop his own style more.

Graphically, it doesn’t really gel at the moment, the current background I’m using could politely be termed as basic and makes the thing look a little bland. There’s a good chance that I’ll be getting a helping hand with some new backgrounds courtesy of an incredibly talented man, but of course, thats dependant on his free time also. If he does have the time to knock em out - bonus, they’ll look better than anything I could come up with, but if not, I’m sure I can make do. Getting the levels and balance sorted is always going to be my first priority.

So, rough progress update in short: level one complete bar tweakage and the addition of a boss battle, absolutely zero done on the sound side of things, sprites sorted for the entirety of level one, the boss halfway to being completed (and a bit of a beast it is too, not literally though) - all in all, I’m very happy that I ditched the last iteration and went back to the drawing board as its an infinitely better game than it would have been had I continued with Plan A.

Anyway, apologies if this is incoherant a tad, but I’m very tired and with the exception of taking an hour out to gander at a game I’ve got for reviewing earlier, I’ve been working on the game pretty much every moment of free time I’ve got. Just wanted to get a progress update down on where I’m up to.

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