So, last week didn’t go exactly as I’d planned, but I got some major (and important, and necessary) engine refactoring knocked out, so that’s nice.
This week, I’ll be returning to those enemy concepts that I’d mentioned previously. A vast majority of the enemies in Gunmetal Arcadia will be identical to those in Zero (that was, after all, the whole point of making the two separate games, so that I could frontload content production that would serve them both and defer solving level generation problems until a later time), but it would be nice to have a couple fresh challenges. I’ve also had some ideas for new bosses, and I may begin stubbing out features to support some of the things I’d like to do with them. One will be a new final boss, a variant of the one from Zero, and the other will be a final final boss, likely accessed through certain legacy event conditions. I’d also like to continue bringing existing bosses from Zero over into Gunmetal Arcadia, which may involve solving some level generation problems. The boss room and miniboss room are currently tagged in the editor such that they can only appear under those conditions, but I’ll likely need more data to associate a particular version of the boss room with a particular boss, in order to better handle the cases of bosses who require specific level architecture to function properly.
Beyond that, I’m starting to reach a point where I can play through and evaluate an entire level. (And so can you — check out last Friday’s playable build if you haven’t yet!) It’s still pretty rough, pretty far from being a shippable game, but I’m better able to parse out next steps based on play experience and not just abstract design thoughts.
Oh yeah, Retropalooza IV is coming up in just a couple weeks (October 1-2 at the Arlington Convention Center). I’ll be demoing Gunmetal Arcadia Zero this year, and I’ll have soundtrack CDs for sale as well. This will probably be the last event I do for a while (barring any yet-unknown plans for PAX South), so come check it out if you have the chance!