build5

Changes
  • You can testdrive your ship! (arrow keys to control)
  • Top slots
  • Dislocaters
  • Animated parts



Well, I had to put in some good hours at work the last few months, learning the Android framework while building an app for a customer who knows what he wants is taxing. It's also rewarding, as I've delivered a pretty lean and mean app. I can't wait 'till it hits Google Play. This did took away any dev time I had on Blasting Forever for a good few months.

Also, optimizing a steering solution with just thrusters is damn near impossible. You have to do almost everything perfect in order to make that happen. After a month of trying I decided to kill my darling. Instead of thrusters there a now "dislocaters". A dislocater can add forward, backward and side thrust as well as torque, depending on the type, but it can be placed anywhere on the ship. That made stuff A LOT easier for the AI to handle The dev build features a rotation and a forward/backward dislocator.

Anyways I added top slots. These are there to place dislocaters, modules (shields, energy generators), turrets etc on. At the moment there can be only one top slot per part. I may remove this limit in the future, but I'll first try how this balances out.

I've also experimented with dynamic music waaay back, but the prototype is promising. I can now switch between music loops without skipping, by directly adding the bytes to the soundbuffer. The idea is to have a musical score with loops that vary in intensity, so the games score can always match the intensity of the gameplay. In other words: if the gameplay gets more frantic, so does the music. I'll have to find someone to write me some cool music though. I'm no star at that.