New swarm enemy
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This week we have continued our journey towards the beta-version of “Dash Bat” (originally “Heartbeat Bat”). My main objective for this week has been to include the mosquito swarm -enemy into the code. These are tightly packed clouds of super aggressive mosquitoes that will slow down the bat. These enemies will be very useful in our levels since without them we only have obstacles originating from the ceiling or the floor. These swarms will give us the ability to place extra obstacles in between our regular rocks and icicles. The swarms will also give the player a little more to think of when playing. Since the bat can dash we want these enemies to be “dashable”, that means that the player can either avoid them, or if he/she has a dash-move available, dash trough the swarm of mosquitoes that will disburse. At this point they are just classes in the code, not really implemented but they will work basically the same as any other obstacle in the game. They will have a sprite and a hitbox, they will also be placed in the same basic grid as the other obstacles. The different with placing the swarms is that they will not be placed on the top or bottom of the screens, instead they will be placed in either 3 or 5 different lanes in the center portion of the screen. Like this: 000001000000010001 001000001000100000 000001000001000001 Think of each number in a row as a horizontal coordinate in the level. The rows itself represent a set vertical coordinate (lane) on the screen. In this example “0” represents an empty space and “1” represents an enemy. The other things that makes this different from the static obstacles is that these swarms have their own movement. Some of our obstacles already have vertical movement like the spiders that attack from the ceiling or the icicles that drop on the bat. But none of them has any horizontal movement. By giving these swarms movement we can give the player two different types of variation from the usual level. If we give them a speed towards the goal of the level, then they will move slower on the gamescreen giving the players obstacles that they will have to predict. If we give the swarms movement speed towards the start of the level they will move faster than the static obstacles. Disrupting the players planned route making them have to make even quicker decisions.  |