Well I'm back and with quite a big update (after working around 30-something hours on it). I'll try not to be as wordy this time around (plus I've got more pictures!). So, here it goes.

Over the weekend I put together the rest of the gameplay for Pong-Karuga and started working on the sprites and particle effects to make it look good while you play. So I'll start off talking about the new gameplay elements implemented and in between you'll see some images of all the current images (some temporary some final. See if you can guess which ones are which).


One of the splash screens (It chooses at random on startup)

So once I got my "physics" system working I started on polarity. This was the simplest of all the gameplay elements in that one variable is switched from true to false and back again. So, that means I got the polarity system up pretty early on. Hitting the ball as the same color will net you 1 energy, but hitting it with the wrong color means you lose a life. At first, the ball never changed colors and was always stuck at white. This made the game pretty easy, but I had to come up with a way to change its color. So I did what every programmer does... I made it random! Now, everytime you hit the ball back, it has a 50-50 chance of changing colors. This makes the "charged shot" battles pretty hectic.

This ended up working pretty well and made the game much more interesting than I expected it to. It's especially fun watching people play it for the first time and watch them struggle to grab the concept, but once they finally get it they completely change the way the play the game and it's great to see.

Now that the charged shot AND polarity were both implemented I had to tie them together somehow. After some toying around I came to the current iteration of the system. When you launch a charged shot it moves more than 3 times the starting speed, but in a random Y direction. This makes it a little harder for the person with the charged shot to just try and take advantage of the other player.


The other splash screen. Yeah, they're awesome.. I know.

If the other player hits the charged shot as the right color, the ball gets volleyed like it normally would, but now the original player has to react to the quickly moving ball. It still randomly changes colors too, making it even more hectic. I've even had a long enough volley that one of us got enough energy to catch the ball again. It sounds simple, but it's really hard once the ball gets moving (and it still speeds up every 3 hits).

So once that was done I added the enemies flying in from the top of the screen. Their job is to break up the flow of the game by just being there. When the ball hits them, they suck it in and change its color to whatever they are and then spit it out in a random direction. They're mean little sons of bitches, especially when they start passing it around through the middle of the board. Once they launch the ball out though, they explode (Still no explosion particle effect yet :( ). I guess they're kinda like bees if you think about it. Once they do their damage they die a very painful death...


Some enemies (no white enemy sprite yet) and the black ball shown with particle trail

Anyway, they come in waves of 5 starting from the very beginning of the game. A new wave will only come once all 5 previous enemies have been wiped out. Oh, and you can blow them up with your charged shot too, which is pretty sweet. AND they'll catch the ball and they fly in from the top of the screen. They're always ready to just screw everything up.

Then I had the idea to get a wired 360 controller to work in game... luckily that didn't take much effort (much to my surprise)! Start pauses/unpauses the game, left thumbstick moves the left player, "A" changes polarity, and "X" launches a charged shot.

Once all of the gameplay had been finished I moved on to the Sprites/sound effects/particle effects. Rather than blabbing on any longer I'll just show you the rest of the screenshots of the game.


Crappy charged shot lightning!


The little pause before starting a match... Everything looks so peaceful


Here's the white ball's particle trail... and stuff.

Oh... and if anybody wants to help me make some sweet sprites for the game I would love the help (I'm a programmer not an artist dammit!). If you want to help, know that I'm on a tight schedule. As in, I would need them sometime tomorrow since the game is due Wednesday morning.

Anyway, I hope you've all enjoyed this little preview. I'll be back with the download for the game on Wednesday!