I did a lot of experimenting this week to get the flying formations right. As I mentioned last week, paths didn’t work as I hoped. I then tried to use an array of coördinates, but designing paths that way was a lot of work, and the movement wasn’t as smooth as I hoped. The main problem was that I couldn’t make smooth curves that way, only sharp corners.
I now decided to try something else: generate paths with mathematical formulae. For smooth and, most important of all, cyclic paths, trigonometric functions will do the job nicely. After a bit of experimenting I found something that works, and it does exactly what I hoped it would do! The best feature, however, is the ability to randomize paths. The function used to calculate them contains a few random factors that affect the shape.
I have also designed the next fighter. At the moment all I have is a flying sprite, it doesn’t shoot back or anything, but it looks quite good, I think.