Version 0.4 is on the way. Only a few times left to go to sleep…

Yesterday I’ve added the initial score system, a simple accumulation of scores given by shot enemies. There are no lives anymore. You can replay each level as often as you want. You just have to pay with your score points. I’m wondering how this will effect gameplay in the future.

Today statistics found their way into the code. For the first impression I’ve implemented the enemy kill percentage which gets reported at the end of each level. Some people like perfect runs so the kill count will be their indicator.

There are several other additions like display options or drop shadows. Version 0.3 suffered from a bug in the particle engine which is fixed now. Nevertheless there are some other magic frame rate hiccups, e.g. coming from the input system (PeekMessage() stalls, very strange). Version 0.4 should give some answers if these problems are just on my machine or on yours to.

See you in a few days.

Cheers,
Thomas

The last few days were designated to the controls of Nordenfelt. I’ve but some sweat into the mouse and keyboard “drivers” because they make or break a game. Especially action games rely on immediate input processing and comfortable control layouts. The control layout was the most important reason for the input system update. Future versions of the game (OK, maybe not 0.2) will provide arbitrary key/button/axis mapping. You will be able to configure your own input layout and save it.

Examples:

• move = WASD, fire = CTRL
• move = cursor keys, fire = left mouse button
• move = joystick axis X/Y, fire = any joystick button
• move = IJKL, fire right mouse button (for all lefties out there!)
• move = 4 joystick buttons, fire = joystick up
• …

Some people mentioned the rollover problem I did not know before. I thought my keyboard driver was guilty for not working diagonal moves while shooting. This problem should be gone now.

The input system passed all tests and the silhouette of version 0.2 appears on the horizon. Coming days will be used for including some new stuff and working through the feedback list. Many thanks at this point to all of you who passed some info back to me. Keep this going!

Cheers,
Thomas