A lil bit of everything today.
Got some areas of level 3 completed, dastardly homing enemies and some revisiting from level 1 make things quite challenging
Added the cursor keys for input handling for use instead of WASD
Had a lot of playtesting time, I`m leaning towards rewarding the player with extra lives every 20,000 points instead of continues now. I want players to be rewarded for getting so far into the game and to encourage them to get that little bit further to extend their play through.
Continues are still buzzing around my head, perhaps using them results in a lesser ending and score penalty. I`m not sure at the moment on that front. Maybe limit the continues to just the 1 per play-through. Not a fan of players just "continuuing" their way through shmups personally.
I`ll be adding a practice mode which would allow players to retry single stages they`ve reached in the main game, should help with regards to practicing against tougher bosses mid to late game in particular.
Different ships are better at dealing with certain stages still, shield-based ships aren`t quite as good or quick at taking out bosses compared to the other 2 but are slightly better at the main game, having shields absorbing enemies and their shots is very handy.
The Mighty-C is still the toughest one to use and needs some buffing up to balance it against the others during non-boss stages. We`ll see how the next few levels turn out first.
Pretty much 60% of the way there now, need to push on with this game so I can get started on the next one come the end of august / mid september. Can`t believe I started off this one last October, but then again, there was a long break away for months whilst adapting to baby Laylas needs :)
