Warp butterflies have returned with a vengeance. I’ve worked so much on the AI for these things now that it was inevitable that I’d get the bug coming back as I’ve rewritten the bloody script so much. They mostly still behave, however, so I’ve left them as they are and not ported the script to get the fireflies moving as well just yet.

Going on to other parts of the game in the meantime, I started working on another major part of the game now that the level end sequence had been clubbed together. This was the start sequence where the cave appears at the bottom right of the map and scrolls up to where Rockford is going to appear. This also has some zany random tile effect all over the screen which I’ve attempted to rectify, with mixed results. Sometimes I’m happy with it and sometimes it just seems to look shit. At least the core code is working so fine-tuning can be done relatively easy.

It was murder putting the start/end level sequences into the main game state as I hadn’t planned them ahead and had all sorts of problems with the main game functions still being active and screwing up how they worked. I’ll plan well ahead next time with stuff like this.

Because they all work rather slowly at present, bonus countdown and scrolling stuff that is, I’ve set up the fire button to just skip everything so player doesn’t have to wait around between lives. A pet hate of mine as the game’s hard and frustrating at times already. Why rub it in?

Also finally looked up and put in a full screen toggle switch on the title screen. I used the space on the title screen where the function keys that never actually ever worked used to display instructions or credits sequences if you press them. Talk about false promises. Both of those parts still aren’t in the game.

If the AI problems go on much longer then there’s a good chance those will be written first as well.

Sooner or later I’ll run out of tasks I have to do from the road plan and then I’ll have to knuckle down on the AI or I’ll never be able to actually release the game.

Categorised as: Boulderdash | Development | Game Studio 2