Things I've been doing recently

Avid readers might have noticed I’ve been a bit on the quiet side lately. A pretty major software release at the day job has been sucking up all my available brainpower for the last few weeks, which hasn’t left me with anything much in the tank for Beercave-related projects.

That all seems to be calming down a little now, so with any luck I should be able to get things back up to speed, so with 10 more weeks till RV there’s still plenty of time to get things polished up and finished off.

Anyway, on to the progress update. I’m pretty much feature-complete at this point and from now on it’s all about balancing the gameplay and making everything look shiny. The aliens now transport captured sheepies to their sinister factory, shown below. #screenshotsaturday alien sheep abduction in Sheep Snaggers 2... on Twitpic Once enough sheepies have been captured, the harvested energy is used to summon the deadly Sheep-Snagger war machine, Mecha Markie! Mecha-Rayson v1.0 Needs work, but good enough for a placehold... on Twitpic Here he is in action: Mecha-Rayson lives! #screenshotsaturday on Twitpic Think he needs to be a bit bigger, actually. I’m going for something of an Attack of the Mutant Camels vibe. There’s also the kamikaze attack-sheep.Little bit of overkill for a 64x64 sprite? #screenshotsaturday on Twitpic You use these guys as missiles to destroy the alien factory and clear the level.

Things that don’t happen yet but need to.

  • Proper animation cycles for the sheep and Mecha-Markie.
  • Better gameplay balance for enemy spawning - all just random at the moment
  • High score table and other menu type stuff
  • Between level transitions. Got something in mind based on the earlier game’s “Ramming Mode” feature and the warp sequences from T2K
  • Better explosions. The current fireball is a bit boring, want something more arcadey
  • More variety of enemies, if I get the chance