Update: v0.6C

Version 0.6C features many changes to Junk Attack and lays the ground work for even more. If you're curious about what's coming up, check out the roadmap at the bottom of this post.

Changelog

Junk Attack abilities and loadouts

• Changed "Powerups" in Junk Attack to "Abilities" since most of them are offensive, whereas "powerup" implies a positive boost.

• The code for abilities and loadouts has been heavily reworked, as well as the format for specifying them, allowing for much more flexibility (more details to come).

• Updated the menus for selecting abilities/loadouts.

• Added a new loadout with two new abilities:

  • A bomb with an alternate shape (cross-shaped, à la Bomberman).

  • A "Transfer Bomb," where any junk caught in your bomb's radius is transferred instead of destroyed.

• Modified some of the existing loadouts based on playtesting feedback. Some of them still need work and will be revisited soon.

• Exploding junk has been reclassified from a positive effect to negative.

• The ability which replaces a player's queued junk with large pieces now uses 4x4 pieces instead of 4x3.

Other Junk Attack changes

• Difficulty in Junk Attack now increases over time. The starting difficulty, and the time between increments, is configured in a new menu which replaces the old difficulty selector (default: speed 5, 60 seconds between increments).

• Attack Meter size differs per loadout (they're visually the same height, but take longer to fill).

• The bomb button has to be held down longer to use abilities higher up in the Attack Meter.

• Meter is earned slower overall to make abilities less frequent.

• 1x1 junk pieces have a more distinct texture.

• There's a new indicator in Junk Attack when blocks are close to the top of your board. The background has a translucent overlay which shifts from yellow to red as blocks get closer to the top.

• Changes to the HUD:

  • Attack Meter is larger

  • If the regular bomb stock is disabled (i.e. the Attack Meter is active), other UI elements fill the gap where the bomb counter would be

  • Junk in queue is slightly smaller and more spaced out

• Exploding junk now plays the explosion sound effect.

• "On-shatter" effects like exploding junk and ink bombs can be applied to specific junk pieces like bomb-only/bomb-proof. Right now, there's a particle effect to indicate it, but this will be replaced by animations very soon.

  • (I emphasize that it's being replaced because I personally find the particles ugly and think they clutter the board :-P)

Internal changes

• Reworked the game board, as well as the junk queue shown in Junk Attack (and also the single-piece junk "queue" in Classic mode).

  • Each slot in the queue now shares the majority of its code with the game board itself, so I no longer have to write code specifically for applying abilities to junk in the queue.

  • The majority of the changes here are internal but they simplified a lot of the game's code and already sped up the development of the rest of this update's content.

• Fixed a previosuly-benign bug during the game over sequence where junk's visual position was updated but not actual position.

• Optimized memory layout for Blocks and Junk pieces.

• Perlin noise shader was modified to be more flexible, I plan on using it for overlays on Junk pieces.

Roadmap

Here are the next changes I plan to make in the coming weeks (in no particular order):

• Rework the loadouts which were largely unchanged in this update.

• Replace the particles used to indicate on-shatter effects with animated overlays.

• Add some more sound effects, including one for quick drops, and a distinct one for each level of the Attack Meter which gets filled.

• Add more songs to the game's soundtrack, and make the music transition between songs instead of playing one song indefinitely

• Add more info to the in-game help menu:

  • More advanced info about Classic mode (such as scoring, difficulty increases, etc.)

  • Basic info about how to play Junk Attack

    • Advanced info about Junk Attack, such as how Attack Meter is earned, may have to wait due to the likelihood of changes being made which would require rewriting it

  • Info about Puzzle Mode will also have to wait, as I have plans for changes I want to make at a later date