As promised last saturday, here come the cannons! The player has three different cannon setups at his disposal. You start the game with a single barrel, single shot cannon. It holds ten rounds and after that, it takes 3 seconds to reload (this may be altered before the game is finished). All cannons have infinite ammo.

The first upgrade adds a small but powerfull blaster cannon. This is also a single shot cannon, but it’s a lot more powerfull than the main cannon. It also fires and reloads a lot slower. Because of its heavy punch it’s perfect for shooting larger enemies.
The final upgrade replaces the single barrel cannon with a triple barrel autocannon. This fires five round bursts and holds fourty rounds (enough for eight bursts). Because of the rapid fire, this is a perfect weapon for taking on fast moving enemies. The blaster will also still be available on this weapon.

So that’s it for the cannons. I already started working on the rocket launcher, wich I’ll probably finish next week. When all weapons work properly, I’ll make a video to demonstrate the firepower.

In case I hadn’t mentioned this, I’m gonna do all my game development updates on saturday from now on. During the week I’m gonna do all other posts, such as tutorials, interesting websites, book and tool reviews, etcetera. But since today is Saturday: another Wasabi Defense update!
First of all, I have changed the background. The color of the sky has been changed, I have made a new starfield wich looks a million times better than the old one (gonna write a tutorial about it, it’s really easy) and I have added more contrast to the hills. And second of all, I have completed the gun engine! This is the central component of the weapons platform; cannons and rocket launchers will be attached to this. Here’s what the engine looks like:

Vector graphics plain and simply look so much better than the pre-rendered graphics I used in my first attempt! I have also added a nice effect to the engine. Notice the bright yellow lines on it? They glow! Originally, they were just static lines, but I decided to try out a glow effect using layered sprites and cycling the alpha channel settings, and the result is amazing. Of course, you don’t see the effect properly on the screenshot, but when the weapons are finished I’m gonna make a video wich should show everything perfectly.
And with the gun engine also comes the launch out of the bunker. In the previous attempt, this was just a beam of light and then the thing faded into existence. I hadn’t taken into account the amount of space I would need to make it actually come out of a bunker and that was the best solution I could come up with. Lame, but it worked. This time, things have improved quite a bit. I have made a launch bunker that’s big enough, so now you’ll actually see bunker doors open and the player launching from the bunker. I did decide to keep the beam of light, though. Instead of a teleport-effect, it now just looks like light shining from inside the bunker:

Next step are the weapons. Instead of a whole range of completely different weapons, I’m gonna design two weapon systems (a cannon and a rocket launcher) that get upgraded during the game. Hopefully, I’ll have something to show off next saturday!

Finished the HUD (head-up display) for the lander today. It’s kinda like the display in front of the pilot on a fighter plane. It displays the lander’s angle, fuel and speed. Two different configurations are available, one for approach mode and one for landing mode. Here’s the approach mode display:

On this display, the angle, fuel and horizontal and vertical speeds are displayed. Also shown on the indicators are the angle and speed limits you have to be within before you can switch to landing mode. You’ll have to rotate the lander to a horizontal position and bring the speed back to a slow hover before deploying the landing gear. Here’s what the landing display looks like:

No need for an angle indicator here, since you can’t rotate the ship anymore. Speed and fuel indicators are still available, and a horizontal position indicator, wich indicates how far away you are from the center of the landing platform. This is needed to line up the ship for landing. Ideally, you’d hover over the landing pad until you’re perfectly on top of it, reduce the horizontal speed to zero and then slowly descend until touchdown.

Here’s the first update on Wasabi Defense! May I present you: the new lander! I have thought a bit about what I could change about it and I came up with an interesting idea. The lander now has two modes: approach mode and landing mode. Approach mode was the same as in the old version. You control the ship by rotating it and firing the thruster engine. In landing mode, though, the ship stays level and you can control the horizontal speed. This can’t be used for a long time, though, since landing mode will eat through fuel like crazy. And, because this will make aiming easier, you’ll need to touch down very precisely. Here’s the lander in action, with its engine firing:

With Sub Commander finished, it’s time to get started on Wasabi Defense again! I’ve had plenty of time to get everything ready for the new start, and believe me, it will almost be a completely new start. I’ve decided to dump most of the graphics, lots of the old code and basically start over. The good news is that I’ve already completed all the graphics for the base, and even a lot of code. Here’s what the finished base looks like:

I’ve decided to follow a different approach than last time. When I started developing the game, I designed everything I wanted in one level and then moved on to the next one. This means I designed a base building, a weapon for the player, a few enemies and then put them together in a level. This time, however, I’m gonna design the base first, then the player and all the weapons, next the enemies and finally build the levels. I think this will make planning a lot easier and avoiding the huge mess I ended up in last time.
I will also start storing as much of the game data externally in XML files instead of hard coding them. Things like hitpoints, weapon strengths, movement parameters, etcetera, will go in XML files. This will make it easier for me to modify them, since I won’t have to digg through the source code for the correct variable, and it will also make it possible for players to change them, making the game harder or easier!