Warp Slayer - Devlog [01]

I used to love shooter games when I was a kid and most of them were on NES and SNES. One of these days I'd really like to make something similar to that old Smash TV game. This project, though, is a space shooter that I've been making in an attempt to scratch this crazy Sci-Fi itch I've had lately.

I know there are countless shooter games out there and I could just make another simple one but there are a lot of aspects of space games that I really like and I can't help but let that bleed through:.. but it's makes things really challenging because I already have a problem with feature creep in general and I've been trying like hell to reel it in but... there's just so much cool stuff you can do with a space game!

There's also the matter of the inspiration. When it comes to space combat eye candy, in my opinion nothing quite beats 80s/90s anime. With maybe DS9/VOY era Star Trek as a close second, though very different. So that means big ships, shield technology, and missiles that move like anime missiles. That also means that this space shooter has to be a little different than the space shooters I've played:

- You move slower. Big ships don't zip around the screen like in the shooters I've played in the past.

- Collision damage is coded with big ships in mind. Small fighter craft get wrecked but the bigger the ship, the more grinding and destructive collisions can be. Ramming other ships, pushing other ships, and the sheer physicality of the environment are all meant to be a part of the player's strategy.

- Should the player fly alone or fly in a fleet? That's a big question for me. So I coded to allow for both just in case. But then how is the fleet deployed? Do they appear every run? Do you upgrade to them? Buy them? I'm still playing around with different ideas there. - Deploying drones and fighter craft or calling in reinforcements feels appropriate for big ships so that's a thing. - Different damage types that respect layers like shields, armor, and hull. - Space is notoriously 3 dimensional and I'm working in a 2D space. So things come from different angles, with most enemies approaching the player from ahead but some enemies strafing at the player from the sides. I'm also toying around with above/below mechanics, possibly scaling and shading sprites in manner that makes them easily recognizable as having moved above or below the 2D plane and then weaponry specialized at targeting different planes.  These are just some of the ways the game had to be different from space shooters I've played in the past. The biggest hurdle in this game's development, though, is definitely the feature creep. This is supposed to be a space shooter so it needs to just be a space shooter but if I had my way, there would be crew mechanics and science research and cargo hauling and mining and smuggling and ground combat for invasions/boarding ships with factions and diplomacy and you-name-it. So to confine myself, I've decided to take a page from the roguelike genre and games like Vampire Survivors where the game loop involves progressive upgrades over progressive play. Mission >> Upgrade >> Do Mission >> Upgrade Possibly wipe progress on defeat with persistent unlockables and/or funds that carry over to the next try. I really want this game to be comfortably playable on both PC and Mobile devices so the movement and UI need to be just right. And since we're dealing with fleet movement, that makes me feel like formation and fleet commands are a must. Since we're talking Mobile devices as well, we need buttons and interface for all of it without making the screen feel cluttered or clunky. Lastly, the main reason I stopped playing shooters is the same reason I don't play bullet hell games or games like Vampire Survivors. I just don't like it when the screen is absolutely saturated and cluttered with stuff. I like a good brawl on screen, but I like it to be just enough to where my imagination can still take it all in. So in a space shooter with fleet combat, keeping things elegant will be a whole challenge unto itself.