It has been too many months since an actual progress update on FlyShootTrade, in spite of the amount of progress that's been made, so it's time for WEEKLY DEVBLOGS. That's right. Something I should've been doing a long time ago to keep myself more on-task and give this entire site a more lived-in feel.
I am so good at this that it hurts.
So here's how everything will go from here on out. Every week, and I'll do my best to keep it to Wednesday night or Thursday morning, I'll be posting a dev blog entry on where FlyShootTrade's at, what progress has been made, and what still needs to be done. Additionally, I'll try to post up general design entries every other week on Thursday evenings. I'm making no promises on that one.
So, onto progress since the first Indiedb build!
-Dialogue screen overlays! Useful for displaying text, character names, and character portraits. Somewhat unused at the moment, but it'll be married to the quest and character interaction systems in the future. Mount and Blade in space here I come!
-Copilots! What would be governed by a bomb in other Shmups is governed by your Copilot in FST. The actual effects of the power are a list of effects, much in the same way that weapons are handled, though they're set up to allow much more freedom than weapons. The only two effects at this time are invincibility and a highly-damaging, full-screen flash. Furthermore, every planet now has a Bar that lets players trade copilots with those at the planet.
-UI Changes! But only the ones that really, really needed it. The map screen's been re-done and there have been a lot of changes to how the fighting screens are framed, which allow me to use the same old code for new things. Does it need to be re-written? Oh yeah. Everything does. All the time. Forever.
So what's next, aside from a whole lot of optimizing and re-balancing and general content addition? QUESTS! Characters will give them out, you will do them, and everyone will be rewarded.
