What sounded like a tiny improvement became one of the most stubborn problems in Galactic Gladiators so far. I had found a much better sound for the ship’s boost: a long, stuttering cinematic riser that made acceleration feel genuinely powerful. The plan seemed simple: The music obediently became quieter. The WAV, however, refused to cooperate. … Read more
The latest Galactic Gladiators encounter now features two medium support ships, each arriving with a pair of smaller craft attached beneath them. Three act as conventional escorts, adding staggered fire while protecting their carrier. The fourth behaves rather differently. Known internally as the Sneak, it hides behind the formation, briefly peeks out to fire, retreats … Read more
Tonight’s experiments were mostly about feedback and fairness. I finally added persistent high scores to the pilot profiles. If a player beats their previous best, the score is saved against that pilot and survives restarting the game. That deserved a little more ceremony than simply changing a number, so the Game Over sequence now announces: … Read more
Tonight I added something fairly conventional to Galactic Gladiators: health indicators for enemies that take more than one hit. The smaller fighters still explode with a single shot, so they don’t need one. The heavier support ship now reveals a small health bar after its first hit, which immediately makes it clear that this particular … Read more
There has been rather a lot of progress since my last update. What started as another experiment in seeing how far I could push Visual FoxPro is beginning to develop some actual game systems — and, more importantly, some decisions for the player to make. The asteroid field has had a lot of work. The … Read more
A few days ago, I was genuinely wondering whether I had pushed Visual FoxPro too far. I had created an enormous, highly detailed mothership that filled most of the screen. It looked impressive standing still, but the moment smaller ships flew across it, everything flickered horribly. For an arcade game, that was a fairly fundamental … Read more
I keep saying this, but Galactic Gladiators is starting to feel like a proper game now. Not just a collection of Visual FoxPro experiments that happen to move around the screen. The different bits are beginning to join together and affect each other. The asteroid field now has eight large asteroids, harmless smaller rocks, salvage … Read more
I only intended to add a few more effects to my Visual FoxPro experiment. Tonight I added a boost button. Nat said the ship needed a way of nipping out of trouble, and she was right. The boost makes the ship much quicker, gives the controller a gentle rumble and burns through fuel at a … Read more
Tonight I was supposed to be working on Level 1. Instead, I ended up obsessing over what happens to the background music when the player’s ship explodes. This is becoming something of a pattern. Galactic Gladiators now has a second piece of music for the asteroid field. It has the same general musical character as … Read more
I thought I was adding some asteroids to Galactic Gladiators. That was genuinely all this was supposed to be. The player would fly through a few rocks, avoid hitting them and then move on to whatever came next. It sounded like quite a small thing to add. It wasn’t. The first asteroid looked good, but … Read more