Day 25: Grenades

The game got its second weapon today. It’s a basic grenade. The red circle in the screenshot is the explosion. I should really make a better explosion effect, but that’s not important right now. The grenade bounces pretty nicely off walls, and deals more damage than the assault rifle. With the introduction of the grenade, the player can now switch weapons with the face buttons on an Xbox 360 controller, with more crucial functions on the shoulder triggers and bumpers, so that you can keep moving and aiming while jumping and shooting, even though you have to stop aiming to switch weapons. A pretty decent tradeoff I think.

I had kinda promised to make a pre-alpha release over the weekend, but I decided against it because currently not many people could enjoy the game because you basically need two Xbox 360 controllers and a friend to play against. I am realizing that this won’t be a common setup for people, so I’m hoping to create an online multiplayer mode for the game, although in a lot of ways the purpose of this project is to create a game much like Liero that you could play with a friend in the same room without the limitation of having to use a jam-prone keyboard to play.

Implementing a couple more weapons should be pretty easy with my current codebase. The remaining major hurdle is implementing a grappling hook or “ninja rope”, if you will. It’s going to be an essential part of your mobility in this game. On the ground, you’re slow, so you’ll want to use the grappling hook to fly through levels that have been blown to smithereens.