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Recent Projects:
Current Project:
Exceptional Journals (in no order): [Eliwood] [Steve Healy] [Ravuya] [Mark the Artist] [Scet] [Ysaneya] [Mayan Obsidian]
My Personal Website
  Response? | 
Posted - 3/31/2007 12:41:37 AM | And the public says:
Not much. I know it's only been 24 hours since I did my forum-advertisement-run, but I'm really surprised at how much less public feedback I've received. I was blown out of the water when I released the first version back in November, and now, after five months of work, it feels like I got less. I'm not sure if it's just the timing of the release, or if I've lost some of the fun factor that the original had. Still, there have been way less negative points (overall) that people have mentioned compared to the original. At least I'm doing *that* right. 
The general points where:
- Controls are a little tricky (but on the other hand, some say they are super-intuitive..)
- Game gets repetitive fairly quickly
- Player gets spawned right beside enemies too much / too fast
- Freeze Bomb likes to slow down/freeze the game sometimes (d'oh!)
- Minimap HUD is intrusive
Review!
Huzzah, another 'review' for MM!
Drinking device?
Hah! I laughed pretty hard when I found this -- I'm hoping not too many people did. I did a little Freudian slip and spelt "shrinking device" as "drinking device" in every single advertisement I posted last night. Oops! They all should be fixed now, but it was pretty funny. Huge kudos to the fellow on gpwiki.org that pointed it out to me. 
How was it done?
I've had several people ask me about the details of how the destructible terrain in Membrane Massacre worked, and the collision detection involved. As I've been getting both tired of writing out answers each time and equally good at explaining it in detail, it might be a good idea to formulate it all into a nice article. "Life in a Destructible World"?
Emptiness?
I think I'm just imagining some of the negativity about the game -- it probably happens when you work on something nearly every day for five months straight. I'm now realizing that public response is a logarithmic curve: the last 10% of the work that takes 90% of the time still only gets 10% of the response. Polish is nice, but it doesn't seem to make that much of a difference. At least not here.
On that note, my days feel a little emptier. I dreamed for the last 3 months of being free of MM and able to work on any of my numerous sought-after projects, but now it's a little disorienting. After always having MM there for me -- ready to be worked on -- for so long, I'm having a tough time thinking about what else I could work on. Something will definitely come to me, though. It always has!
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| Advertising begins! | |
Posted - 3/29/2007 11:50:48 PM | Kudos to Superpig
Things have been a little explosion-prone around GD.NET lately (namely the GD.NET+ webspace and showcase systems), which now seem to be in working order, much to the work of Superpig (aka Richard Fine). Just a short thanks for getting everything in working order!
Membrane Marketer
Now that the showcase and my webspace on GD.NET are functioning properly, I can now begin posting Membrane Massacre on many game/gamedev forums around the 'net, and start getting some more solid feedback about the game.
After that, the plan is to submit the game to as many freeware websites as possible. This part is second, since the forum-goers as mentioned above will likely catch most of the bugs or balance issues still lurking in the game before the more formal appearances on actual freeware websites. I'm really excited to see how high I can push the download count.
Following that, my work is more or less over. Just a matter of leaning back and grinning like an idiot at how many people took the time to play one of my projects.
I don't think of myself as much of a businessperson/marketer, but I know that having things that stand out are important to catching people's attention. Here is my post on GD.NET for Membrane Massacre, which I think the topic title stands out pretty good for. Hopefully the pretty screenshots will do the rest of the work!
Feedback
A massive thanks to everyone who took the time to play MM and threw some feedback in my direction. I'm extremely grateful, and I do take your words to heart. I'm really happy that I managed to supply you all with a few minutes of fun.
In addition, huge(r) kudos to Steve Healy and Eliwood, who wrote me some very flattering reviews less than 24 hours after MM's release!
Eliwood's Review
Steve Healy's Review
Steve Healy
I promised him a plug a little while back, and never got around to filling my end of said bargain. Steve Healy is a fellow game developer who has written a number of articles on the topics of game development and personal development, covering everything from interesting to motivating to downright cool. Take some time to check out his journal and read some of his insightful articles and gamedev adventures.
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| Membrane Massare v2.0 Final Release | |
Posted - 3/27/2007 1:02:05 AM | After many months, many hours, many tears, and many supporters, it is my pleasure to present:
Membrane Massacre v2.0 (~15mb)
Five Long Months
I still find it hard to believe that it's been five months since I undertook the project that began as a two-week mini contest between me and splattergnome. I'm both amazed and disappointed that I've been on this game for so long. The months, melding in together with the endless barrage of school assignments, just rolled by.
The Last 5%
...is the longest and hardest. Getting an Installer program working properly took a quite a few hours longer than what I had anticipated. It being my first experience with an installer program (Nullsoft's), I expected it to be a simple "choose files and bam!" spiel. Turns out I actually had to write a script to all of the installation/uninstallation/license/startmenu-items work. It wasn't that bad overall, and I'll definitely use their stuff in the future. This also seems to mark the first game I've actually *needed* an installer for.
Next came the ReadMe. Looking over the dusty ReadMe I had for the first release of MM (back in November), I immediately knew it needed a make-over. I kept the basic stuff like weapon descriptions and 'contact info', but the rest was overhauled. I've always had a tough time trying to find things to say about my games inside the ReadMe, so it was definitely a struggle. I'm pretty happy with the end result though, so at the very least give it a look-through.
Finally, the last couple of days saw the implementation of ship-specific weapons -- or quirks, perhaps. Just little extras that each unlockable ship receives to add some more incentive to get far in Survival mode.
(Why freeze what you can FRY!?)
(Scatter missiles ahoy!)
(The fearsome wrath of the Indigo Avenger's Indigo Laser is as vengeful as it looks! )
Feedback & Marketing Plans
Feedback is one of the main reasons why I do all of this. Hearing back from a player that they had a great time playing makes the whole process worth it. Even to make for a great gaming experience for just a few players would make the five months of sweat/tears/blood worth it.
Knowing that, how great would it be to multiply this by several magnitudes? My marketing and business experience are minimal, so the basic plan is to make a fairly attractive write-up for an forum-based advertisement, and start spreading it around the 'net. I hope to get an Image-of-the-Day on GD.NET, and on some reputable indie game development websites, now that MM is far more polished than before. I'm eager to see how many hands I get this game into!
Thanks!
Everyone who has been watching my progress of Membrane Massacre since November, or even just casual readers: thank you. Especially the kind people who have taken the time to write constructive and positive words about me and my projects. It's definitely what helps keep me going, and I likely would not have finished had I not of had you folks. And an additional thanks to Ravuya who is hosting MM right now until I get it up on the Showcase.
With all of that, enough said. Go and bash some bacteria, and let me know how it all turns out.
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| A little late! | |
Posted - 3/26/2007 12:49:18 AM | I'm a little behind schedule, but only a few hours of development are left (which will be put into the project tomorrow). Less than 24 hours remain before what I hope will be the final final release of Membrane Massacre.
I had some very pretty screenshots of the ship-specific weapons that will be included, but GD.NET's image system seems to be down at the moment. Nuts.
Until tomorrow!
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| So close it can be smelled! | |
Posted - 3/25/2007 12:23:05 AM | Membrane Massacre
Looks like I'm going to be sticking to my promise! I got tons of work done on MM today -- Survival mode is entirely implemented. This includes unlocking new ships as you get further in the waves, and five unique spawning styles. By spawning styles, this means that when the wave starts, enemies will pop into existance via a line, a sine wave, spewing out from a single point, or in a circle around the player. Purely eye candy, but it looks absolutely killer when you get to watch 70 splitter cells spawn in a spiral around you.
(Random backgrounds (that are randomly coloured) every 5 waves spices things up a little, no?)
(Psychedelic!)
(New ships are unlocked every 7 waves that the player can survive for.)
In addition, I thought it might be fun if the player was given somesort of whimsical 'rank' or title based on how long s/he was able to survive for. They're mostly more, er, 'empowering' than the screenshot below.
(I can only get my kicks from calling bad players names. )
Tomorrow will be a busy one. I have a presentation to prepare for tomorrow, in addition to some good ol' studying, so it'll be a tad tight for finishing up Membrane Massacre. The next 24 hours should be intense!
Web Space?
I'm just about out -- under 5 megs on my GD.NET+ account. The GD.NET staffers are already providing an excellent service, but darn it. This either means that I'm going to have to stop posting screenshots, or that my older posts will lose their graphical glory. We'll have to see if we can hassle them into doubling our space again.
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| Nearing the finish line. | |
Posted - 3/24/2007 12:40:08 AM | Membrane Massacre
I can't believe it's almost been 5 months since I began Membrane Massacre. Where in the world did all of the time go? It seems like just a few weeks ago I first posted up the initial screenshots of a simple ship flying through some generated levels. Less than one month to create the current release, and then I sat down for some four-odd months and coded up a storm. When I think of MM, I still picture that simple cell-blasting game, but what I have now is so much more. It's already as big (line-count-wise) as Skirmish Online was, and the most complicated game I've ever completed. They grow up so fast. 
The ultimate goal is to finish Membrane Massacre this weekend. I'm aiming for a late-night (EST) Sunday release. I'm so close to completing this wonderful game I can taste it. Just a few things here and there to finish up, and off it goes into the vast world. I can't wait to hear what kind of feedback I get.
I've been busy the last week -- as busy as I can get with schoolwork and a semblance of a social life.
(All weapons now have customized ammunition displays!)
(The HUD now has smooth borders and a solid black replacing the ugly gradient.)
In addition to these (relatively minor) changes, Survival mode is going under heavy work. It's been an interesting experience thus far trying to make Survival more fast-paced and action-packed than the 'Story' mode. There's also a number of interesting quirks that'll be involved. It's definitely going to be a fun one to play.
There are also two more background images which are picked and coloured (based on the level) randomly which, although subtle, adds a nice extra touch to the atmosphere. Maybe I'll even get around to writing a new level generator, too. Don't tell anyone, but it's still the same one I wrote -- originally as a simple debug test :P -- back in November. Ssshhh.
Good night then, for now. Hopefully I'll be writing to you all again on Sunday evening!
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| Mini-Article One | |
Posted - 3/20/2007 12:27:36 AM | Feature Creep, Game 'Size', and ToDo Lists
I had always told myself that I was immune to the dreaded ailment known as 'feature creep'. I've been pretty confident that I've always adhered to the general overall picture of the game rather than went off on tangents to implement things that would make a game jut out at some strange angle. I'm biased because I'm the author of my own works, but so far I think I've evaded this stigma.
For quite some time it has been my belief that games should always try to maintain equal breadth AND depth in its 'features'. What does this mean? Imagine a game as a linear list of components. Any element from "ship selection system" to "hand grenades", whereas each component contains a linear list of subcomponents. You'd end up with something like this (taken from Membrane Massacre's Roadmap file):
[*] Visual additions
[*] Particle system revamp
[*] Alpha and Additive blending routines
[*] Convert all particle spawning instances to use blending (if needed)
[*] New/better text font
[*] Visual indicator of where your ship is when you start/respawn
[*] Adding shading to pop particles
[*] Explosion system (smoke + explosion 'tracers' (maybe not?))
[*] Have explosions knock back player/enemies
[*] Screen shake effect upon explosion
[x] Explosion shrapnel that can get stuck in both the level and membranes
[*] Improve missile trails
[*] Add yellow 'semi-stalker' cells that rush at player and cut through walls with ease
[*] Enemy modifications
{*} Fix the 'get stuck on some walls' bug when eating fast
[*] Throw other enemies aside with ease
[*] Eat laser beams (become 'redder' and grow)
[*] Devour missiles; 'opening mouth' in its direction and doing bubbles
[*] Add blue 'freezer' cells that use freeze bomb and are shooters
[*] Immunity to freeze particles
[*] Freeze particles make it grow (to double its size!)
[*] Create ice roots when eating through terrain
[*] Use freeze bomb(s) if: a) near player, and b) counter has expired
[x] Use freeze bomb if missile in vicinity
[*] Use freeze bomb when destroyed
Long-winded, but you notice that although there is a tree-like structure evident. Also it's worth noting that the maximum depth of any 'ToDo node' is proportional to the breadth of the parent node. Imagine a game with a Roadmap like this:
[ ] New enemy AI
[ ] Goblin Fighter
[ ] Allow mob to drink 'potions of fire'
[ ] Allow mob to breath fire for a duration
[ ] Increase mob's perception for duration
[ ] Gain special 'fire god' powers
[ ] Immunity to all fire damage
[ ] Exception to 'hellfire' spell damage type
[ ] Gain mob-friendly status on all fire-element mobs
[ ] Allow mob-to-mob trade with fire-element mobs during status
[ ] Implement new mob trading window for goblin fighters /w this status
[ ] Greater Vortex Wurm
[ ] Give burrowing status boosts when underground
[ ] Let underground wurms have a chance of creating earthquakes
[ ] Earthquake system for vortex wurms
[ ] Have vortexes randomly spawn as wurm burrows across map
[ ] Make special vortexes destroy all vorpal-element equipment on the player
[ ] Give special damage bonus to Elf-kin mobs/players
Here we see that each node has a very large depth compared to a practically tiny breadth. Its effect on the gameplay is almost literal. You'll end up with something that has very deep gameplay, but a tiny scope (or breadth). Given the environment of the game this is describing one might think of roguelikes, but these games tend to have massive enough breadth to cover said depth.
This is essentially what feature creep is. You start implementing one feature, and then you forget about the rest of the project. Your mind wanders into this single-dimensional reality and you write this feature like its the new focus of the game. The result? Certain game features go incredibly deep and have great detail, but as a whole, the game suffers. You end up with a rather shallow shooter with an extremely detailed character creation system, or an RTS with a killer GUI/menu system and weak gameplay, or an RPG with an astounding combat system but no storyline. One (or several) elements of the game get developed to an amount disproportional to the rest of your game. Balance is very key.
This is also a wonderful reason why you should keep a Roadmap/ToDo-list for your projects. Lists like the above don't usually get made because their purpose is to keep you aware of the breadth/depth of your game. Most perpetrators of the above don't keep roadmaps, and so its easy to forget about the rest of your game. It's exactly the reason why a tree-like structure is ideal: to keep yourself from taking any one element out of scope. You might want that dynamic menu system like Game X, but it will look more than a little silly if the rest of your game is programmer art.
It's worth noting that this syndrome is typical of hobbyist and some indie developers more than all else. Commercial games constantly have people watching over 'the big picture' of the project to ensure that it doesn't grow without bound in random directions. Is it a coincidence that these projects have clear design documents and thought-out goals beforehand?
Do keep a roadmap. Do form a clear and concise vision of what you want your game to be before you touch code-to-IDE. Do avoid feature creep by taking a look at your whole project before coding. And, of course, do remember the scope of your game; don't get carried away!
While you're in the mood..
..Take a look at Eliwood's interesting look at the flavours of hobbyist game developers. Like anything, there's no such thing as only four shades of gray, but it's scary how easy it is to fit nearly every developer (or dev-wanna-be) into one of these headings with minimal trouble.
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| The cells really ARE coming! | |
Posted - 3/16/2007 12:21:12 AM | Membrane Musiccre!
Now that all of Draffurd's kickin' tracks are completed, I set on my quest on implementing music via the wonderful FMOD library. It was a bit confusing initially, as it seems they released a 'newer' version that has an entirely different (entirely OOP) API. It took a little while to realize why the heck all of the API docs and tutorials I came across weren't coming even close to compiling.
In short, the music sounds entirely awesome in-game. Right now it's just the basic logic of "pick a random tune from the music pool at the start of each level", but even this little bit adds a lot to the atmosphere and gameplay. All that's left to do on this front is have the music fade in/out on the end/beginning of a level, and to set up the special tracks to play (main menu track, and final boss track). In terms of audio, after this, I just want to add a few miscellaneous sound effects here and there for polish sake.
All of these MP3s certainly add a lot to the file size! Up until now, my biggest game distribution archive size has been pretty small; certainly under 5 megabytes. Given this day and age, exceeding that isn't a huge deal, but I'm still nostalgically worrying about those elusive 56k'ers.
Status: Employed
Wow! I was extremely surprised yesterday to find out that I found a co-op placement! 24 hours after my first interview I received a job offer, which surprised me very pleasantly. I knew that the interview went fairly well, but I didn't think it went that well. Irregardless, it looks like from this May until the end of August I'll be working for the Canadian government. More specifically, the Ministry of Education. It may be filling the role of "that co-op kid who knows how to fix bullet points in MS Word", but it's a paying job. I also get my own office -- glee! And since it's a government job, my interviewer assured me that they were pretty lenient on what time you actually arrived at work. I'm very excited to think that I'll have this juicy item on my rèsumè for future usage, and how great it'll be to work in a real professional environment. Definitely more on this as May grows nearer.
GameScribe -- Odds and Ends
I decided to take a swing at fixing some things here-and-there with GameScribe, my Scheme/Lisp-like scripting language aimed at scripting for games.
In particular, I implemented the "variable scope stack", which replaces the previous system of having one gigantic hashmap of variables; essentially at global scope. Now variables are stored in a stack of hashmaps of variable bindings, which allows me to push a new variable hashmap to hold, say, the local variables (or arguments) of a function. Of course functions still aren't implemented, but this certainly paves the path. This will also let me add the 'local' (or 'let') statement, enabling local variables to exist in more than one scope. Which is far more exciting than it sounds.
I also added a neat little concept (which probably exists already, somewhere): the idea of allowing special statements to evaluate and unevaluate expressions within the code itself. For example:
(define a ($ (+ 9 10))) ;; The '$' operator forces the inner expression to be unevaluated
(print a) ;; Returns (+ 9 10), unevaluated
;; The '@' operator forces the inner expression to be evaluated
(print (@ a)) ;; Returns 19
This may seem a little strange/useless, but in terms of practical uses, this will let me store the bodies of functions as forcefully unevaluated expressions (which they should be). When lists are implemented, it may oftentimes be useful to have list contents which are expressions you'd want to evaluate only at certain points.
On the more useful side of things, conditionals are also implemented, under the guise of 'if'. I directly took Lisp's syntax, having:
(if (conditional-statement)
(do-this-if-true)
(do-this-if-false))
By placing another 'if' within the do-this-if-false, a user can effectively construct 'if, else if, else' conditional structures. Something similar to 'switch' will see implementation sometime soon as well.
I'm very excited about how GameScribe is turning out. There are some design issues here and there which are unsurprisingly arising (since this is my first go at writing an interpreter/language), but it's been an unbelievably educational and rewarding experience.
I'll likely be integrating it into most of my future games, which serves to only make things even more exciting. The notion of not having to hardcore data like AI, items, or weapons gives way to 'moddability' -- every gamers' friend.
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| Wednesday, March 14, 2007 |
| All X and no Y makes Jack a dull guy... | |
Posted - 3/14/2007 12:24:58 AM | Work!
Been up to a lot of work lately -- none of it on the game development front however. School has been busy, and with the end of the term rapidly approaching, I've been hauling some arse in finding myself a co-op placement for the next term. Hopefully by this time next week I'll be able to hit the gamedev properly and get Membrane Massacre finally released. I apologize for the lateness in getting this game out the door.
House!
Or townhouse, perhaps. Me and two other friends living on my floor are going to be living together in the Fall. After some last-minute house hunting we found a really nice townhouse for a good price, for which we'll be signing the lease papers tomorrow. I can't wait to be out of this tiny residence room and to be free of the terrible cafeteria food!
Co-Op!
I have two interviews arranged so far, with my first one today, and my other next week. I'm really happy with how today's went -- I'm confident that I made a good impression. The job isn't even really programming; more like hauling carts of laptops around and providing technical support. Still, it beats the pants off of not working at all. In fact, the main reason I chose to do co-op was so that I could pay for the subsequent terms.
Music!
Draffurd has completed and sent to me all of the tracks for Membrane Massacre, which sound ridiculously amazing. The game is going to feel and sound so much better with his added musical touch. All that remains is to implement an interface via FMOD, and then we can listen to some rockin' beats while we massacre those pesky membranes.
Article!
I've begun work on my first 'real' game development article: "2D Game Development with OpenGL". I've noticed that a lot of the same questions come up with users from a SDL/Allegro/DirectDraw background that are interested in jumping into OpenGL for their future 2D games, and have found no shortage of struggling. I plan on covering everything from initialization, to alpha testing (for colour masks), to fonts, to using the z-buffer to layer sprites. I haven't seen any existing articles that quite cover this particular topic, so hopefully this ambitious article will be a valuable resource to developers looking to migrate to OpenGL.
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| Of raycasting and assignments. | |
Posted - 3/7/2007 11:48:52 PM | School!
Oh boy, I'm really paying for that weekend of game development progress. I'm behind on a couple of assignments and will be facing a Sociology midterm tomorrow morning. And a sketchy German lab test too, I'm not mistaken. Anyways, I still only partially regret it. I got tons done on the weekend, and I'm still (mostly) managing to keep my head above water-level on my assignments. After a nice school-oriented weekend this weekend I'm sure things will look prettier all around.
Cast my rays, baby!
Speaking of prettier, the raycaster is on its way to a bright future. There isn't much of a visible difference (screenshot-wise), but I've been hammering the heck out of the rendering and wall-detection code, and the optimizations have really been paying off. My last screenshot showed a hideous FPS of 42, whereas now in such a situation I'm getting over double that.
I also have looking up/down and moving up/down implemented, but I'm not sure if I'll end up using them, since both practically demand I implement somesort of variable-sector-height jazz like Rise of the Triad or DooM.
I'm currently working on textured floors and ceilings, but since they're a little wonky right now, I'll hold back on a broken screenshot. Since fill-rate is a major issue in a raycaster, I may be dropping things down to a resolution of 320x240 in the near future.
(Speeeedy!)
You'll be slicing down kobold chieftains before you know it.
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| Best. Weekend. Ever. | |
Posted - 3/4/2007 11:41:24 PM | Holy screenshots!
This weekend more or less constituted that infamous "the final 10%" polish that every good game demands. It's always the most painful and agonizing part, but it's also always worth it. I'm absolutely bush-whacked, and am now a little behind on a couple of assignments, but I have no regrets. The last three days saw well over 24 hours of solid work, and I'd trade it for nothing.
Onto the next level..
Smoother level transitions were always a big thing on my list since the first release. You'd previously just sort of "appear" at the next level without any sort of indication of what just happened, or where you stand in the game.
Nowadays, nifty "Level X", "Wave Y" notifications pop in top, left, and centre at the start of each level and wave, accompanied by a nice bright white flash (or a fade-to-black on level end).
Oh, and big kudos to Draffurd for his voice acting on the beginning of each Wave. (Hehe, you'll see when you play it. )
(And so the world begins anew..)
(Your ship only respawns between Levels, so always be ready during those Wave-to-Wave periods!)
Which ship will *you* choose?
Alright, head's up: I was initially tempted to pull an EDI and just post these screenshots without any words or explanation, but reconsidered. I realized: heck, I want to talk about these. I sure as heck didn't spend my whole Sunday adding ship selection just to post only some sleek screenshots!
(Choose your ship! Stat variations and different coloured thruster trails sell these babies like hotcakes. )
(5 ships in total -- collect them all! Maybe if you can get far enough in Survival mode you'll unlock some more...)
(Finally -- we know who did all of that hard work! )
It took a long time, in short. From the scanlines on the rotating ship portraits, to the GUI component alignments (all by hand!), to the subtle glow effects on the stat bars and the selection indicator below the portrait. Next came actually adding the stats given as variable properties of the player, and balancing the stats around for each ship.
Completion!?
Frankly, I love the look and feel of this whole game. It doesn't matter how egotistical that sounds -- I put tons of hours of hard work and effort into this once-tiny game, and am proud to say that I wrote this game. But it wasn't all me either: without Prinz Eugn my backgrounds and ships would be a whole lot more drab, and without Draffurd the game would be awfully quiet. I'm happy that these folks had enough interest in my project that they would contribute their time to it, and I'm honoured that people like yourself are taking the time to watch my game unfold for the last three months. I also look very forward to thanking you all for playing once I finally get this big lug out the door.
As for the release date: it won't be long now. Just Survival mode and getting in Draffurd's almost-done music is left (which is sounding killer -- I can't wait to see how much atmosphere it adds!). If all goes to plan, you'll all be toasting malicious cells in a week's time.
Have yourself a good night! Blessings of code upon ye!
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| The little guys. | |
Posted - 3/2/2007 12:20:30 AM | Membrane Massacre is really close to being done. The new enemies are just about finished, and they are a ton of fun to play against -- not to mention quite challenging. I particularly had fun implementing a small variety of 'small' features that add some metaphorical umph to the game:
- Freeze Bombs can now freeze missiles in mid-flight, causing them to detonate a few moments later. Very handy against a small horde of Mecha Cells.
- To complement the above, the Freezer Cell now reacts to a missile in its vicinity by using its own Freeze Bomb, halting/removing any potential threats.
- Mecha Cells are now (mostly) immune to the Freeze Bomb, receiving only a penalty to its maximum speed, and a slightly more blue-ish hue.
- Mecha Cells violently explode when destroyed. Violently.
- Stalker Cells, when chasing the player and contacting another cell in its path, throws the offending cell aside in order to race faster at the player at break-neck speed.
- Missiles now detect collisions with eachother, resulting in a nice blast. Handy for beating a Mecha Cell at its own game.
Additionally, I've decided that slightly 'buffer' versions of each of these new foes will appear on the 4th Wave of each Level as a sub-boss, just for kicks, since players seemed to really enjoy the final boss, El Mucho Membrano, so much. I hope to get in stronger versions of the existing enemies, too. After that will just be some more polish, and Survival mode. Then: out the door!
(Survival mode is going to be brutal. )
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"Good night, Monster Land."
"Good night, brave warrior."
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