DevBlog #7 - On the (bargain) hunt, You ain't the Boss of me, Road to Release
On the (bargain) hunt
A mini-milestone has been reached with the working implementation of the primary weapons shop. There is still some graphical work to do to show the impact of the purchases, descriptions etc, but having this in place functionally means work can proceed on balancing economy within the main campaign, alongside finishing the secondary weapons and new craft shops also.
You ain't the Boss of me
One of the main appeals of creating a shmup with procGen elements was the ability to create fresh playthroughs each time, and build upon the content and world – this can and will involve new maps, enemy waves, mission types, but also new bosses which can all slot into the main campaign. To that end, I've started working out the Bosstiary mode. As the boss count goes up, I thought it would be useful to have a game mode where you can practice battling against the bosses available – as well as being a pretty useful tool during development! More on this to follow as the mode is built out.
Road to Release
Getting Flight of the Athena to a releasable state has and continues to be an adventure in itself, but it feels like plenty is moving in the right direction. The current plan is to take it to Steam Early Access with a chunk of the main campaign and the Bosstiary mode active, to gather valuable feedback whilst the remainder of development takes place. Any bugs / defects would be welcome, but actually it would also be at a stage where any awesome boss suggestions, enemy types etc would have a decent chance of getting worked in. I'll put out a date for this release when I have fair confidence of achieving it.
Tasks for the next couple of weeks: Next pass of wave/chunk creation, finish shop implementations, Bosstiary mode, test assets > final assets. (And probably a few critical tasks I've forgotten!)
A mini-milestone has been reached with the working implementation of the primary weapons shop. There is still some graphical work to do to show the impact of the purchases, descriptions etc, but having this in place functionally means work can proceed on balancing economy within the main campaign, alongside finishing the secondary weapons and new craft shops also.
You ain't the Boss of me
One of the main appeals of creating a shmup with procGen elements was the ability to create fresh playthroughs each time, and build upon the content and world – this can and will involve new maps, enemy waves, mission types, but also new bosses which can all slot into the main campaign. To that end, I've started working out the Bosstiary mode. As the boss count goes up, I thought it would be useful to have a game mode where you can practice battling against the bosses available – as well as being a pretty useful tool during development! More on this to follow as the mode is built out.
Road to Release
Getting Flight of the Athena to a releasable state has and continues to be an adventure in itself, but it feels like plenty is moving in the right direction. The current plan is to take it to Steam Early Access with a chunk of the main campaign and the Bosstiary mode active, to gather valuable feedback whilst the remainder of development takes place. Any bugs / defects would be welcome, but actually it would also be at a stage where any awesome boss suggestions, enemy types etc would have a decent chance of getting worked in. I'll put out a date for this release when I have fair confidence of achieving it.
Tasks for the next couple of weeks: Next pass of wave/chunk creation, finish shop implementations, Bosstiary mode, test assets > final assets. (And probably a few critical tasks I've forgotten!)