I’m trying to keep up to my posting at least every Sunday, and I’m trying to keep to that. But I keep telling people I can either write about developing this game or I can develop it. That’s the way it is when you’re a one (well with Zug doing the music and sound 2) man band.

So, yes, it’s still looking to the naked eye a lot like Asteroids. Mainly because all the bits are in place for the classic game, so they are being expanded to use in the ‘proper’ game, and later I’ll be able to start adding more content. This is still very much the foundation of the game itself, and it needs to be solid – and as close to flawless as I can get it.  It needs to be able to be built upon, and as this area – the sector – is where most of the action takes place, it needs to work well and fast.

For the most part the elements that will drive the game are in. They may vary in their prettiness, but most of them are working the way they should. The action takes place on an infinitely wrapping area (the sector) that can be from 3 x 3 screens big, up to as big as I’d like. The larger the screen size, the more you lose the ‘claustrophobic’ feel of the arcade, but for later areas this will also allow me to diverge from the standard fare of Asteroids and do things that wouldn’t have been possible.

The ship and camera are set to the center, and the traditional ‘slow breaking’ of the original game has been done away with in favor of a frictionless space.  There is still a max velocity, for game purposes.  Bullets (atm just plain) follow your velocity as they should – there  is a little tweaking for aesthetics, but for the most part they behave as you’d think they should.

The big under the hood setback that needed working on was something I had overlooked initially. In the past I’ve done scrolling games, but I really didn’t think about ones that wrapped back on themselves in all directions in such a small space.  This lead to complications of things vanishing as they wrapped, collision detection problems that needed solving, and other issues… Now that they’re take care of, it’s a matter of making sure all screen elements adhere to this, and make it as easy as possible to add new content later.

The HUD is done, and is rock solid – so I can start adding information and touch screen controls later.

With this base getting closer to the way I want it to work, I can (hopefully) in the weeks ahead start getting to other areas of the game, and we’ll be able to watch it slowly slide away from it’s inspiration, and more towards being it’s own game.