The BitBull Blog

So… following on from my last post about bugs, here’s everything that was on that Trello TODO list that’s more of an ‘improvement’ than a bug (though of course, fixing bugs is always an improvement)!

1. Different Damage Types
I’ve added different damage types – physical, fire, plasma and jetboard and given enemies the ability to be resistant (or vulnerable) to certain type of attack. Some weapons deal out a combination of damage attacks. I’ve also added armour upgrades that increase the player’s resistance to these various damage types.

2. Object Pooling
I’ve added object pooling as described here to the flamethrower and antimatter gun, both of which were spitting out a ton of new objects per frame which was causing some slowdown if a bunch of enemies appeared armed with the same weapon type.

3. Destructible Buildings / Enemy Bones
I’ve massively improved the animations for destructible buildings and also added rubble which interacts (to an extent) with the player. Buildings now take damage from explosive weapons as well as the jetboard attack, adding to the immersive destruction. Enemy bones and rubble now spin in the air when disturbed with great force – this can look pretty cool under certain scenarios, totally pointless in terms of gameplay but cool!

I’ve also been through and designed skulls for every enemy and added shrapnel as well as bones as that seemed more appropriate for seom enemies.

4. Improved Explosions
I’ve added a bunch more visual ‘snap and crackle’ to the explosions. Spent way to long on this for something that only last a few frames and ended up going down a complete rabbit-hole writing a custom shader based on Voroni patterns (to give the ‘crackle’ effect) which still doesn’t work quite the way I wanted but I think will get the job done. I spent time doing some frame-by-frame analysis of a bunch of pixelart explosions I liked – one thing that surprised me is that the initial ‘whiteout’ flash in many explosions is often preceded by a ‘blackout’ frame. Of course I had to add one!

5. Improved Camera
One of my many arch-nemesises (or should that arch-nemesi?) throughout this project has been the bloody camera. Been back and re-worked it yet again, radically simplifying the code and ending up with a result that’s much better for it. Still little work to do but I think it’s finally almost there. Whereas before I was positioning the camera based on speed/time moving in one direction and enemy position I now rely solely on enemy position and only use speed/time moving in one direction if there aren’t any enemies nearby. I also take difficulty into account when calculating the ‘weighting’ of enemies.

6. Improved Jetboard Attack Visuals
I felt this needed more ‘punch’. It was one of the first things I designed and, as a result, was looking somewhat lacklustre compared to the rest of the visuals. I’ve added particle trails to the jetboard, a subtle shader effect that approximates the attack area, camera shake and a camera jolt. I think the result has miles more ‘oomph’ than it did before.

Oh yeah, I also made the jetboard attack quench fire if the player is alight and safely detonate any ‘stuck’ explosives (cluster bombs or limpet mines).

7. Improved Bomber Enemy
I didn’t like the way these guys pretty much ignored the player as they were attacked, just soaking up bullets until they exploded. I’ve made them get much more aggro when they take damage now which gives them a load more personality.

8. Improved Mother Enemy
This enemy was a bit too much of a ‘bullet sponge’ as well. I revisited the art for this one as I felt it looked a little flat, then I reworked the enemies it gives birth to, making them much more aggressive so it feels more akin to the ‘swarmer’ enemy in Defender that inspired it. I also changed the ‘bullets’ it fires, replacing them with little ‘space invader’ type characters that have far more personality and are far less annoying (though no less difficult).

9. Improved Squocket Enemy
As mentioned in the last post, the AI for this enemy was buggy so I rewrote it. The bullets it fired were also pretty lame and quite annoying so I’ve replaced them with these little ‘baby squocket’ dudes which (can you see a theme here?) have far more personality and are harder but somehow less annoying and more ‘fair’ at the same time! The screen capture software I use went a bit glitchy when capturing the video for these so apologies for that!

10. Improved Baiter Enemy
More of the above here! The enemy itself I was happy with but it’s bullets were really annoying so I’ve replaced them with another little mini invader.

11. Re-routed Treasure Chambers
I had placed these deliberately sporadically throughout the game world so that it would take tons of plays through to get to all of them but in retrospect I think that would have been too annoying. Consequently I’ve reworked things so that you should be able to get all the key treasure from any particular world in three ‘passes’ (or less using teleports). This has meant there’s not much treasure at the outer reaches of the game ‘pyramid’ so I might have to add a few bonus treasure chambers in those outlying reasons to give players a reason to go there other than sheer completionism.

There’s been loads of other minor improvements too but those have been the major ones. Next step I think I need to finalise the main game palettes and then start thinking about a ‘final’ (?) demo movie! The end is almost in sight people…

Dev Time: 7 days (ish)
Total Dev Time: approx 282 days

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Finally finished all the boss battles – well, I say ‘all’ but I do have an idea for a fifth but I’m not going to add that until the rest of the game is complete (if I do at all).

Looking back through my files I started this process on the 13th March, so that’s around 2.5 months of elapsed time. It used to take me that long to bang out an entire J2ME game! No wonder it’s been doing my head in. There’s been the blogging as well of course, and preparation of GIFs etc for Twitter, plus a couple of bank holidays and (unlike most indie devs) I’m determined to maintain a sensible work/life balance so I only allow myself to work on this four days a weeks (otherwise I’d go completely nutso). Still, I think that’s far too long by anyone’s standards. Ironically though, despite the fact that I’m probably at the lowest-ebb I’ve been motivation-wise throughout this ridiculous project, in these bosses I’ve completed the work I’m probably most proud of throughout.

So this last week or so I’ve mainly been tweaking the first two bosses, the Stinger and the Snapper, to make them live up to the standard of the last two. When I started this process I had no intention of creating boss fights – these were just going to be ‘normal’ enemies (only larger), but as time went on I just had to admit to myself – ‘Face it, these are boss fights and you should approach them as such’. Consequently I needed to go back to the first two and approach them with this mindset.

1. The Stinger
This battle only comprised of two stages so I felt I had to add a third stage to make it consistent with the others. I added a second stage attack whereby, once the stinger’s abdomen is destroyed, it reveals a hive that unleashes a swarm of mini-stingers to attack the player.

To create the swarming effect I have a HiveMind class that is basically an invisible sprite that either tracks the player or returns to the boss. The individual creatures always swarm around this central point in an offset eliptical motion which looks random yet somehow predictable.

I also added audio for the various attack stages and made a bunch of code changes under-the-hood to make the way things were structured consistent with the other bosses (this was my first boss so some of the code was pretty hacky as I worked out the best approach to do things).

Oh yeah, I also now have the boss’s creepy legs get shot off one at a time in the third stage for added drama!

2. The Snapper
I spent quite a long time on this one as I just wasn’t happy with the ‘rhythm’ of the gameplay in the second and third stages. The motion and attacks were too clumsy and the ‘shredder’ weapon fired in the second stage was pretty much impossible to avoid which made the whole fight feel too random.

So I completely pulled apart the AI for the movement and improved it considerably, including adding a ‘reverse’ attack which I think plays out pretty well. I also swapped the shredder weapon for limpet mines which are can be shot or avoided by the player.

In the third stage I improved the exposed ‘brain’ animation considerably and turned this into the boss’s weak point for said stage (this seemed too obvious an opportunity to pass up). I also added another attack for this stage where bubbles containing strange fossilised plankton creatures are fired from the boss’s ‘exhaust pipe’.

Finally I added audio for all the various attack stages.

3. General Testing
Then I went through all the bosses testing them against the Flamethrower and Gravity Hammer weapons as these operate rather differently from the other weapons.

The Gravity Hammer particularly is a right pain in the arse as it affects the motion of any enemy it touches, effectively taking control of an enemy for a short period of time. As I never really planned for this properly when I structured my initial code it leaves things open to some nasty bugs. Oh well, lesson learned!

I also made sure each enemy and mini-enemy has an appropriate icon on the scanner (not really happy with the stinger one – looks too much like an aerosol can), added an obvious ‘hit’ effect for when the player takes damage by touching a boss, and finally applied some explosions worthy of such giant enemies.

Thank God that process is over!

Dev Time: 6 days
Total Dev Time: approx 202 days

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