Hey everybody! Sorry it’s been so long since the last blog post. I’d written a draft for one last week, but decided to scrap it. On to pf that, we were going to have some guest writers come if for the blog a few times before that, but we had some scheduling problems. So. Yeah. This post today will be all about the progress of the Collapsus weekly builds so far! Let’s jam!
There have been numerous big fixes (some bugs generated by the new code funnily enough, but that’s to be expected), tons of graphical changes, new modes, music (finally), and some mechanical changes. Let’s go over those one-by-one, shall we?
This is NOT a mockup! Yup, our baby is all grown up and pretty!
We finally added an animation to the Jolt power-up as well. We also re-added the Void power-up animation which had been missing from the game after Geoff left and Mark picked up the project. The Chain power-up now also has an animation (a quick white flash), followed by rainbow score text and a visible combo multiplier (mainly because no one seemed to know what Chain actually did before). We also made it when the menu buttons are clicked, they have particle effects like broken blocks (since they are styled like blocks). This was a little something stolen from Megaman X (well, sort-of). It helps get people familiar withe the breaking mechanic before even playing the game!
Awful background, not HD, looks nothing like the mockups
Anyway, it seemed that no one programming the game (6 programmers across 11 years, mind) were interested in implementing the graphics the way I’d actually designed them! Well, luckily, I was able to sit down with Mark and, with come considerable edits of my own and a bit of time in the engine for him, we made the last couple builds nearly indistinguishable from the mockup! All it really took, at the end of the day, was poring in the mockup at 50% opacity and then lining everything up with that in engine… but to make sure everything worked well in HD, we had to do a bunch of math. The results are amazing, though, so we can’t complain!
THIS is a mockup. See the “7350”?
Enough of that, though. On to the new modes! In addition to the 2 harder difficulties, “Expert” and “Diabolical”, we now have a grand total of 14 Special (or “Challenge”, depending on the day since we keep waffling back and forth on the name) modes out of 25! There were supposed to be only 20, but it’s us we’re talking about… did you every think we were even capable at stopping at just 20?! Those modes include:
Virus:
Slowly depleting score
Obsidian:
Blocks with counters become Obsidian
Meltdown:
Obsidian blocks that have counters count down to game over
Fatigue:
Block meter does not replenish after level-up
Chroma:
Split color blocks in addition to “regular” blocks.
Flux:
Gravity changing field rotates clockwise
Shake-Up:
Blocks can be shuffled at will (like the Shuffle powerup)
Flip-Out:
The screen can be flipped at will (like the Flip powerup) but not rotated
Acidic:
All standard blocks are Chameleon blocks
Heavy:
Docked blocks become Obsidian blocks when picked up.
Axis:
Special mode allows gameplay to rotate counter clockwise at will
Spectre:
A blind mode where you can’t see how many breaks you have
Wizard:
When a block is clicked, instead of breaking it, it shifts to the next Chameleon color
Warlock:
Opposite of Wizard, Acidic mode but you tap to change Chameleons to normal blocks
Yup! That’s a lot of Special modes, and the rest are very close to being done as well.
Yeah, look at all THAT new content!
We also made some gameplay tweaks/additions. For one, we have a new Karma powerup, which clears the board of those pesky Chameleons blocks. It comes and goes (and no, I will NEVER get tired of making that joke). We also tweaked “The Bag” (the algorithm by which blocks spawn) to be a bit more fun (less Nova blocks, for instance). The weeklys also saw the introduction of the Shuffle powerup, which does exactly what you think it does, Split blocks for certain modes (they’re really fun) and Obsidian blocks in a couple other modes that only clear when they reach the (true) bottom of the screen. We even have a Time-Freeze powerup! As you can probably tell, much work was put into making cool new Special modes. Rest assured, there were some balancing and power tweaks in the normal modes here and there. Luckily not much else needs to be done on
that
front!
Needless to say, we’ve been busy! Heck, Kristy’s been working on the puzzles for Puzzle mode. She’s got a huge chunk done, and we haven’t even implemented that mode yet! This is all while she’s been working on Radarkanoid3000 and our game jam project, MOTION.rest. It can’t take much more time now!
Well, that’s all the news that’s fit to print for this week (and it sure was a long one). Hopefully next week will be about MOTION.rest or our latest newspaper interview. Either way, catch you then!
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