It’s been awhile since I made an update (a month?!), and I’ve been sitting on these changes for a while, so I figured I’d finally post an update.
Changes this version:
- The progress bar and explosion move smoothly, rather than jumping to their intended position.
- Updated the Accelerator mutator. Instead of gaining speed when ending levels, you gain speed over time.
- Removed the level-end sound effect. I still want something to play when ending a level, but I don’t know what yet, and I hated the sound I was using.
- Updated the main menu with new mutator descriptions and removed the health stats from the ships.
- The speed rating of ships now factors into how much distance you gain when hitting a booster.
- Updated most of the spawn patterns that started with boosters so the boosters are now optional and have the same chance to spawn as they do elsewhere (i.e., rarely).
- Removed Blitz as a ship option and updated speed values. (I thought Blitz had the most boring ship design.)
- Redesigned Alpha.
- Removed the testing options on the main menu.
- Reorganized the ships on the main menu so they’re ordered by speed.
- Added a brief speed boost when picking up a booster, and an animation to go with it. I also changed the boost effect on Alpha – a spray of yellow (to match the boost pickup color) out the engines. I’m not satisfied with it yet, though, and it’s hard to see.
And since I just played it and found some new bugs…
- The player and explosion don’t seem to be moving at the same rate. They should always be equidistant from the center of the screen. I think I’ve got a math bug somewhere.
- Sometimes you’ll hit a panel that you shouldn’t when changing lanes. (For example: if the lanes are “1-2-3”, changing from 1 to 2 will sometimes hit a panel in 3 as your ship banks.) This bug has been around awhile, but I’m still having trouble getting rid of it.
Here’s the link: Tunnel Racer v27a
I like the new mechanics more than the old, so I’ve started ripping out some of the old code and cleaning things up. I’m still trying to get the feel right, though. I need to figure out the best way to handle the speeds, because once things get going pretty fast, collisions start to fail (your ship can glide over panels without hitting them), animations will twitch (resulting in accidental collisions), and other problems start to crop up… I think I might just need to find a better way to control all the animations that occur as you move around.
Brainstorming
UI
I need to figure out what options I’m going to allow on the right-side of the main menu. My plan has always been to put the mutators on the left and some game options on the right (like sound/music options), but I don’t know what options I’m going to add. Sound and music settings are obviously important, but what else?
Animations and Effects
I’m still playing with effects – trying to find something that looks good, but isn’t too “loud” is a lot more difficult than I expected. I need some new sound effects, but I don’t know where I want to go with the graphics and sound – realistic or retro? I’ve been using a “retro” theme for everything thus far, but I can’t find an explosion or fire sound effect that doesn’t sound annoying…
The animations when the ship changes lanes, jumps, and boosts are all nice but cause some problems. I need to figure out some way to improve how they work to make them more fluid, and I need to figure out a way to prevent collisions with panels that shouldn’t be hit (like I mentioned in the bug list above).
Player Progression and Achievements
I’m going to start working on implementing ship unlocking and achievements with the next version as well, since these are going to be critical for the final game, and some testing is going to be needed to determine a good progression for unlocking ships.