Crunch Time

Just a short post for today -- it's now nearly finals week here at DigiPen and everyone is working extra-hard to get their various projects and assignments done, myself included. I worked all weekend this past week to get my regular assignments done so that I would have more time for my CS529 final project, the game engine. I've now implemented nearly all of the required features and can spend time on adding new gameplay logic and other similar things.

Below is a screenshot of the game. I only took one because right now there's not much of note to show off. [All artwork and sound is also being done by yours truly.]

Right now, the game is designed around a simple Asteroids-type playstyle, but I'm working on expanding it to more of an open-world shoot-em-up. Since we got an extension on the project, I'd like to add some additional twists. For instance, with component based game objects, it should be a relatively simple matter to allow the player's ship to land at a space station and then spawn an astronaut that the player can then control.

To take it a step further, why not let the player enter a building and then transition to platformer-style gameplay? All this would require is slightly different logic for tilemap collisions and adding gravity, which is a simple matter. I would also have to create a  specialized controller component to handle the left/right/jump movement and controls, but that shouldn't be very difficult either. It took a while to transition the engine to a component-based structure, but the results are definitely going to pay off!

EDIT: Here's a shot with new artwork with a more vector-graphics feel. I feel like this fits the genre a little better. What do you think?