From Competition to Finished Game

Apr 12, 2022

Today's goal: Continue hacking on our Ludum Dare 50 entry to turn it into a complete game!

Updates

Mesche progress:

  • Fixed a couple of nasty issues I found during the game competition:
    • Crashes when the game ends due to a strange (yet simple) GC bug
    • Issue with if expressions in some functions, wasn't jumping correctly!
  • Saving compiled bytecode to object files for the purpose of bundling with the executable

The Plan

Ludum Dare was a lot of fun! It's given me the motivation to polish this game to a completed state and "release" it by the end of the year.

High Level Tasks

TODO Add powerups that are dropped randomly

  • TODO Speed boost
  • TODO Energy recharge speed boost
  • TODO General energy boost
  • TODO Syphon range extender
  • TODO Screen bomb

TODO Polish up the main menu

  • TODO High Score screen
  • TODO Controller setup (or at least a help screen)
  • TODO Credits screen?

TODO Add a few more types of enemies

  • TODO Especially those with more elaborate movement patterns or groupings
  • TODO Also add end-level bosses?
  • TODO More complex hitboxes (multiple spheres)

TODO Create sprite graphics for everything and polish them over time

  • TODO Sprites for bullets
  • TODO Sprites for player and enemies
  • TODO HUD sprite design

TODO Visual effects with shaders

  • TODO Add a CRT shader
  • TODO Particle effects with blur?

TODO More weapons for the player?

TODO Starfield display in the background

TODO Create a more interesting overall goal

  • TODO Maybe finding pieces to repair your ship to escape the region

Tasks

DONE Take a look at the current state of the game

DONE Fork the ld50-silent-sypher code to a new repository

DONE Move task list from previous slide to a file in the game repo

TODO Implement the basics of powerup drops