I have an enormous amount of artwork for Shadowdawn to generate very soon. One of the things I’m gearing up for is increasing the base sprite-size to be more visible on smaller screens and standard definition (not to mention, more detail just looks better), which means I have to completely redraw Arashi so far, and she will look just a little less “chibi”. It won’t affect the map tiles much thankfully. The most recent addition to the engine is the upgraded handling of projectiles and weapons. Originally Arashi’s sword slash was linked to her player class, but given the fact there were going to be more than just sword slashes she can do, and enemies needed to be able to attack as well, I grouped them all together into one object type. Here you can see both Arashi’s sword and the kittri’s energy bolt (?!) on the screen, though kittris can’t actually fire lasers (I just made a temporary AI adjustment that allowed them to test the routine). This projectile class will handle melee attacks from both enemies and allies, actual projectiles and magic effects, and also can be used for pyrotechnics that center around the enemy/ally that calls it (like shields). The best part is all the programming for that is done, just need the special effects drawn.
Once I finish this last bit of programming the collisions for projectiles (making sure enemy stuff only hits allies and vice versa) and a few other modifiers like color, it really will time to stop with programming entirely for awhile. The engine is getting surprisingly robust, I may be able to reuse most of the object-handling for the next game in the series (but it’s a bit too early to be leaking information about that). One other addition I want to make though is making collisions for map objects allow for diagonal walls… I need to refresh my memory on some math formulas for that.
Really looking forward to having this first level playable, once it’s done there really is nothing holding me back (well, there’s a few things I need to work on for the bosses still, but that’s all I’m going to say). I’ve been doing some research on games with similar design philosophy this week, to see how the beginning levels play out, and I can say I’m confident I’m on the right track with Shadowdawn Genesis.
