Enemy Building Entry, Breaking Glass and Mystery Boxes - In ChopperSquadX you pilot a chopper but that is just a small part of the overall gameplay. The basis and only way you can win are my managing your troop resources vs a more powerful enemy. As the pilot and only person with access to the air you need to transport and position troops and supplies for victory. To even the odds your troops will have to infiltrate and command the available buildings in the game.
Different buildings will provide your team with various buffs (faster health regen, increased firepower). So any team that controls the most buildings provides their team with a greater battle advantage. In my vision of the game your troops and enemies can enter/exit the buildings at various levels, accomplish your desired goals then exit the building to resume the main fight.
Another 'want' for this area of gameplay was for the buildings glass to break as the forces battle inside the building. This release demonstrated that effect. Currently I have it tied to my 'earthquake' shake test. It can shake (L/R, U/D or random) and the glass which has HP breaks as its health gets lower. It cracks then eventually releases shards of glass on impact.
In the video you can see the glass breaking as I shake the buildings. I also wanted the broken glass to reveal the contents of the room as well as the rooms back wall. This effect has also been achieved and when the glass breaks you can see the items inside in front of the temp background inserts. XRay vision may display an icon or give hints to each buildings contents but the only way to 'see' enemies and items are to break the glass.
Crit Bubbles!! - Who doesnt like to see a nice crit bubble. I finished tweaking my floating text for my desired pop/float/drop settings and added the ability to spawn colored crit bubbles. I plan on using critical hit buffs in the game so showing when one procs is a natural. Crit bubbles will show enhanced stats for healing, damages and XP at this point. This list will probably expand.
XRay vision is more fully implemented though the visual effect will probably change. I'm anticipating some type of scan reveal transition before you can fully see inside. Currently XRay shows a frozen silhouette of the enemy inside and their level. The mystery boxes will possible contain chopper menu powerups and currently the blue icons represent coins. (even though I plan for them to placehold for a variety of items). They logic path creation for buildings is complete and every building is created with a valid ladder path from top to bottom. (the ladders will also be shown as elevators, teleporters, etc.) The player will also be able to place flags inside the building to control troop movement and assign them objectives.
I've added some UI feedback to the Troop Add and Delete menu. When you add troops the counter icon for that troop type briefly flashes green, on deletion it flashes red. These are a few of the UI items I have been tackling when taking a break from some of the larger routines.
I've completed most of the internal programming and am on the path to finally implementing some GAMEPLAY!! Next week should see me finish XRay mode and get to adding some firepower to the chopper models. Fun stuff coming up...
* Added Floating Number Crit Bubbles
* Inside Building Enemy Placement
* XRay Vision Enhancements
* Added Enemy Level Text labels
* Added Troop Selection Feedback
Engine: GameMaker:Studio 1.4.1474 - 1.4.1567
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who plays that?
LOL!!, Its NOT a game yet. (Its just starting to look like one). I'm still adding game mechanics and necessary routines. It will start to be playable once I add chopper firepower and some basic enemy AI.
At this point I've avoided that since adding just those 2 elements would require LOTS of playtesting time thats better devoted to core programming right now. ONCE the majority of the underlying systems are in place I'll add shooting, combat, AI.
This game will actually have you doing QUITE a bit more that just flying around and shooting (even though that IS part of the game). So I'm making sure those other systems are Rock-Solid, Easy to Use, Bug-Free and can be implemented QUICKLY so that when I finally add shooting to the game I can be assured that the squad control system wont interrupt the game flow.
I've spent lots of time designing the UI and making sure you can execute commands within 1 or 2 key/button presses. Stay tuned in the coming weeks I should complete the core systems and get to some shoot em up stuff. This is a DEV log so you're seeing the game before everything is added and complete (Isnt that what IndiDB is for?).