Three hours on, here’s where I’m at:
- Fixed a bunch of gameplay bugs, a few of them causing spectacular crashes (but these were all the usual corner-cases where you expect to find crashes.. respawning after dying while in the middle of using a petition was one of these, for example).
- Tuned time bonuses so that individual games now tend to last about two to three minutes for me. I’m sure that if you went in really trying to play as long as possible, rather than just having fun, that you could probably play infinitely. But I don’t really have time to do proper play tuning and difficulty ramping for a release tonight, and I don’t want the game to be too difficult for first-time players. So I’m erring on the side of ‘accessible’.
- “How to Play” screen implemented. I like it a lot, even if the code is shocking. I’m going to have to put an apology in the file, when I release the code.
- Adjusted VectorStorm’s initial resolution selection code (for the very first run only). VectorStorm now tries to initialise a resolution of 800×600, instead of choosing the smallest supported fullscreen resolution. If the current hardware doesn’t support 800×600, it will choose the next smallest resolution supported. If nothing under 800×600 is supported, then it will choose the smallest resolution that is supported. The resolution can still be changed from the options screen.
- Added a “back” option from the options screen, so people don’t have to guess the ‘q’ keymapping.
Stuff that remains to be done:
- Custom graphics for three different characters
- Polish title screen
- Sound effects
- As much gameplay tuning as I can manage.