The Snap, development log: Day 2
Mac build (r21)
Windows build (r21)
Status: Option of 1 or 2 players; in 2 player mode there is a blue and a green player. Each player can now fire bullets (the small squares). Player 1 moves with WASD and fires with IJKL; player 2 moves with FXCV and fires with HBNM.
But there’s no collision logic on the bullets yet, so they just bounce around and accumulate in the corners of the screen.
Thoughts:
- I cannot help but think. What if I just stopped here? Like, maybe added damage from bullets and said, okay, here’s my 2p arena shooter. How on earth would anyone play this? The WASD/FXCV scheme would require the players to configure themselves in extremely odd ways to reach the keys; Player 2 would basically have to be sitting in Player 1’s lap. Perhaps we can think of this as an activity for couples.
- These controls can’t stay even if the Twister problem is fixed. Firing diagonally is really difficult with the IJKL aiming.
- Maybe I’ll have to rethink my position on physics. The more I start moving toward actually implementing the time/replay mechanic, the more it starts to seem like implementing physics would be really, really easy. (In fact it may be easier to implement full physics than not implement it– the current build has some really weird behavior due to the fact I’m using Chipmunk for collision detection but then in my first-pass way of doing movement I’m treating it in ways a physics engine does not expect to be treated.) The big problem with physics though is that the world I present– 1 black screen, 2 autonomous squares, bullets that are destroyed on impact, unmoving walls– gives very little opportunity for a physics engine to show off its presence. Of course I chose this gameplay idiom specifically because it imposed simple physics and made the mockup easy to finish, but it means if I try to think of “what are cool flourishes a physics engine could add?” I don’t have a lot of room to maneuver.
I’m increasingly starting to wonder what this game would be like if instead of a top-down/Combat! sort of thing it were a vs. 2D platformer where the players had free-shooting guns (like in All Of Our Friends Are Dead, or something) and were free to run around and jump and fire at each other. That would give the physics engine a lot of neat stuff to do and might simplify things like how to present the controls. I have doubts I could get this done for the competition deadline though so maybe that will have to be something to consider later.