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Update: few fixes and changes

Found a couple of bugs which I felt needed to be fixed, And also just found a game breaking one, although not too sure how likely it is to become a problem.
For it to become one, you would have to reach the final boss, have green laser weapon thingy (maybe at level 3), and be shooting in the upper left corner of the screen or something like that.

- Fixed game breaking bug at final boss.
- Fixed some minor collision problems, which would make you collide with the back of a wall a bit too soon.
- Added a function which provides an extra life for each 5000 points you get
- Finishing a stage while being on your last life will provide you with an extra life for the next stage.
- Adjusted the endurance of the first boss a little down
- Added a bit of code to the shooting mechanism to make it less likely to stop shooting while holding the button down
- Added a savefile which comes along with the game, which allows you to start directly at stage 1 without having to watch the intro.

I'm also working on providing on adding some additional difficulty levels, like easy and hard. Either that or just hard, harder and hardest, where hard would be easier than the current version


Game complete

Finally completed the final level, which ended up being the third one. Didn't get as many levels as I orginally wanted, but I guess there's a limit to how much you can do within a month, especially if you need to take care of tons of other stuff as well.

Anyway, the game now features 3 levels, and about 20 different enemies.
If you don't die at any point, the levels take around 3 to 5 minutes to complete. But since you will of course not avoid dying, the actual amount of gameplay will probably be somewhat longer. I probably went slightly overboard with the last level in terms of difficulty, and lacked the time to make it simpler.

I also implemented a level select menu which you can access everytime you load the game, so that you can choose from what level you wish to play, as long as you've reached the level in question. Doing this will give you the score and weapon you had when you finished the level prior to the one you choose. This probably seems a bit trivial since there are only 3 levels anyway, but I wanted to implement it from the start, so I did.

I also added a simple intro and ending, with the intro including some of my less than flattering pixel art:

This is Captain Mutty, calling RAD DOG for help against the evil MAD CATS.

The is complete and can be played from start to the end, but it will very likely lag on older computers, so I will still try to look for a few ways to optimize the code and possibly add some way to reduce it. The problem is that fixing the lag will probably require sacrificing accuracy of the hit detection. Unless I find some magic bad code I've overseen, I'll probably try to add some option menu where you can adjust the balance between lag and hit detection in the future.


Stage 2 done

Stage 2 is finally done, and it has taken way too long. Seems like I will only be able to make one more stage if I want to keep the deadline. A pity, but not much to do about.

Anyway, stage 2 introduces another element of danger, explosions

There are now bombs floating around which will explode when you shoot them enough, and the boss will shoot exploding missiles at you. There are also a few new enemies, most of which upgrades of older enemies.


Stage 2 in progress

Stage 2 is about half done now, but it is progressing slower than hoped, mostly due to having a million other non game related stuff to deal with. I have 3 big projects going on, and the probably most important one doesn't seem to be going all too well. Didn't know it would be that difficult to make a FGPA board create some sound.
A break is coming up soon though, so that should probably help a little.

Added a few new enemies to stage 2, and I guess it's starting to look more and more similar to gradius rather than zero wing, but I can live with that, seeing as the gradius sprites are better suited for the purpose (and easier to find) anyway.

Also, I could still use some testing for stage 1, in terms of lag and difficulty. Only had one person testing it so far, and would be nice for some second oppinions as well. The video shows the first stage of the game and probably gives a better feel of how the game is going to be.


Stage 1 finally done

Most of the core functions of the game are now up and running. Life's deplete as you die, you respawn at check points depending on how far you got, and you can get upgrades through power ups you can get from defeating enemies.

I spent quite a bit of pondering as to what kind of power up system I should be using, and ended up doing something twin-bee-ish, where a power up will spawn, and you change the power up by shooting at it.

There are 5 power ups, each determined by a colour.
Purple : speeds up the ship
Blue : gives a laser upgrade
Yellow : a rapid gun upgrade
Red : blaster upgrade
Green : scatter shot upgrade

Each weapon has 3 levels. If you have one weapon and you get another through a power up, you will lose the old weapon with a level 1 of the new weapon, so one needs to be a bit careful.

Something I could need now is somebody to test the stage. I have a tendency of making things slightly hard and could use some outside oppinion on the difficulty of the first level, as well as checking if the game lags on other computers. It's not a very big level, about 3 minutes and 30 seconds if you don't die.

If anyone feels like testing it and giving me some feedback on it, give me a call, and maybe I'll be able to make a game which people can actually beat this time
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