Hello everybody,
I want to take some time and talk about some improvements for Star Rogue. A few playtesters were criticising the animations and enemy A.I./movement. To encounter those worries, I started to improve the enemy sprites and improve the animations. This is a long term task and won't be completely solved in a few patches.
I try to animate all the tentacles of the aliens and should also look into getting some eye animation. Increasing the subimages of an animation always helps to make the overall animation smoother.
For the A.I. and movement of the enemies I wanted to create something, the player can more easily react to. So some of them now stop and then shoot, so the player can dodge more easily. Also a acceleration and deceleration gives the enemy a more physical logical feeling and more fun to play against!
In further updates I want to experiment with froglike jump movement and enemies which crawl at the walls. Because at the moment most of the enemies are flying around, which should get mixed up a bit!
Here is the changelog of the last two patches:
Patch v0.31
added:
-objects/placeholder for more characters/looks
changes:
-removed some stars from bg to make menu text easier to read
fixed bugs:
- dark/pause screen not in front of railings
- cables overlapping walls/hud in some rooms
- explosions not properly ignite other explosions
- fire/gas sounds looping after game over
- removed hardcoded debug keys
Patch v0.32
added:
- new enemy graphics and animations
- shoot animations for existing enemies
- revised destroy animations
changes:
- improved movement of several enemies, they now accelerate and decelerate
- enemies now stop and "aim" before shooting
- some enemies now only shoot if they have line of sight of the player
balance:
- reduced movement speed of some units
fixed bugs:
- two enemy types now shoot again in four directions upon being destroyed
- items and portal appear in boss room before defeated
- stage transfer doors had no entrance doors
- fixed cables in a few rooms
- enemy spawning in the wall
Star Rogue is currently available in the Steam store in Early Access. You can find it when clicking on the image below or following this link: Store.steampowered.com.
