Welcome to another Dev Diary!
This week is all about the enemies of Operation: Aftermath.
All of these enemies will feature in the Co-Operative Survival mode. Let's take a look at them individually.
This is the most basic enemy in the game, it simply runs towards you, and hurts you when you touch it, it'll die in about 3 or 4 shots.
This enemy charges at you whenever it can, it will be in your best interest to learn how to dodge its attacks, it can dish out a great deal of damage in a short time.
The Breeder, like the Alien, simply walks towards you and does damage, except, as the name suggests, every few seconds, the enemy will reproduce, take these out quickly, or you might find yourself over-run. They are fairly weak.
The drone is again like the Alien and the Breeder, except it's small and fast, less accurate weapons may struggle to hit a Drone, so using a Crossbow or a Handgun against one maybe your best choice. They are spawned by the Drone Boss.
The Laser Drone is similar to the Drone, except it's slightly slower, and will fire laser projectiles at you when it's close. Likewise, they are spawned by the Drone Boss
This is the Drone Boss, it moves randomly around the map, and every few seconds, will spawn a Drone, if there are already a few Drones out, it will start spawning Laser Drones, so take them out quickly to avoid being over-run. The boss is fairly strong, and will fire a burst of laser projectiles at anyone who dares get close to it.
The Spitter is fairly slow moving, but deadly. It will spit acid at the player, dealing a significant amount of damage if you get hit dead-on.
The Crab has yet to be implemented into the game, but is planned to lunge at the player and latch onto them.
That's all the enemies in the game so far.
In terms of development, CTF mode is pretty much done, and is playable with Human players in split-screen, I hope to get CTF AI programmed soon.
The menu system has been altered drastically, instead of multiple menus that you have to go through, just clicking "Start Game" on the main menu will put you straight into the game lobby, where you can select the amount of players, game settings and the map.
With the new lobby system in place, I started working on filling it with content, so there is now a button for turning AI on and off, which will fill up any player slots available with AI. Also when you save a map in the map editor, a snapshot is taken of your map, and this is used to show a preview of the map selected in the lobby screen.
I also got to work on the post-game stats screen, with the game now having a 16 player limit, I had to re-do the stats system, the layout is all done, I just need to fix a couple of bugs and it should be finished.
Stay tuned to the Operation: Aftermath Twitter account to keep up to date midweek, and check back here every weekend for a developers diary, just like this one.
Have a nice weekend,
Jenraux
Check out MetaSpace, another game by Dark Fire Entertainment.
