Project 2.5 is alive… and strictly speaking it has been for a couple of days now, mostly on the Illogistix development box whilst the hardware was being worked on.
At the moment i’m tinkering with the online highscore management and trying to solve an issue with what the game is attempting to transmit to the web server being mangled, after that there is only cosmetics and a couple of features i want to introduce as the levels progress and it’s all but done.
i’ve been thinking (no jokes about headaches please, i get that all the time from my Beloved!) The original idea behind Illogistix was to produce quick little games rather than full-blown production numbers; to that end, the project currently called Jaguar Strike is getting too large for that brief and i’m going to transfer it over to the Bullet Mechanics “label” where it’ll also be upgraded to one of the later iterations of the Blast Engine. That leaves Project 1 still ongoing (which is going to be a slow burner but doesn’t warrant being moved over) and i’ll add Project 2.5 in the next couple of days, something based on an even earlier version of the Blast Engine that doesn’t use wave data at all and instead randomly generates attack patterns.
In other news, the Illogistix development machine (yes, i have a seperate box for it, mainly to keep the projects straight in my mind!) is going to be upgraded from the old IBM NetVista to a generic case stuffed with parts i had lying around;the “new” machine has a GeForce 4 series card, 1.7GHz of CPU and i’ve doubled the RAM to half a gigabyte. Right now it’s soak testing in the front room, running prototype code for Project 2.5 to make sure there are no overheating issues.
And yay… finally got a proper “look” for the site and a logo for Illogistix itself!
Update: the installation of the Illogistix development box is done, it’s sat on my desk to the right of the keyboard and mouse (all three machines are connected to a KVM switch) with an Acorn RGB SCART monitor perched on top that’s connected to my modded Playstation (which is currently running X2 because i like the music)… so fingers crossed, Project 2.5′ll be somewhere near to done soon!
i’ve been showing a the preview of Jaguar Strike around and it’s come as something of a surprise to me but people are taking it rather… well, seriously as a game and i’ve even had an offers of a soundtrack and playtesting! As a result of all this attention for something i essentailly slapped together from a prototype framework to see what it was capable, i suspect i’ll be doing something similar and giving it a little more attention than i originally intended and it’s getting background scrolling… and yes, i know that Project 1 is presently stalled because i didn’t have a map editor for it but i’ve literally just finished building a simple one so both projects will benefit!
Now i just have to be (relatively) serious about Illogistix as a project and actually build a WordPress template for this blog or something!!
i had a really good idea for a new command for the wave manager and it seemed like an incredibly simple feature to add as i was tootling home from Asda; simply have a “nudge” value for the nasty angle so that when a wave is being created using the script’s repeat function, each nasty in the wave is nudged on a few degrees on from the previous one. The nudge would mean that what previously took an item in the script for each of nine nasties moving in a “fan” could be done with a single entry…. but when the time came to implement this wonderous feature, the damned object oriented code with it’s stupid bloody linked list decided it didn’t want to play and i spent several hours getting incredibly frustrated and swearing at it. A lot. Until it was “persuaded” to do as it was told!
Since it works rather well (at least, it does after that painful installation), this feature will just have be passed on to the Bullet Mechanics framework and, whilst i was in a good mood at Jaguar Strike, it gained variant of that framework’s newly-added multi-bullet firing mode.
Things are moving on with project 2, currently nicknamed Jaguar Strike for no better reason than my wanting to write a game that started with the letter J. Here’s a piccy:
Jaguar Strike - grabbed during a boss battle
It even has a rudimentary title page and runs as a complete loop now rather than just being the game and bailing back to Windows when the player dies or quits. Playing through the attack waves already defined takes me about a minute, although an inexperienced player who doesn’t know where they’re coming from’ll probably need closer to two.