Monthly Archives: April 2011

Apr 04 2011

GRADUAL TWEAKS

I started playing through the Metal Gear Solid series again a few weeks ago. MGS1 was great, but even the Twin Snakes version is obviously a bit dated. I’ve just this evening finished MGS2, which feels much more current. The cutscenes don’t half go on though, do they? Perhaps the worst excess in MGS2 is when characters repeat themselves – they literally say the same thing twice, and then other characters will rephrase the same thing again if asked, and so on. Still a phenomenal game, though.

Work on Fight Back continues. I don’t have anything to show for today as such, but I’ve been playing around with the difficulty curve + the AI’s capabilities and smoothing out a few other rough edges. I think I’m mostly putting off adding in non-fighter ship types and bosses and setting up a menu and so on. Maybe I’ve hit the point of project fatigue, but I’m determined to start things I finish instead of hopping projects. I’ll just get on with it tomorrow!

Apr 01 2011

HUD.

Well, I’m not super happy with this, but it’s an improvement. All the information I want to display is here now:

The player ship’s just picked up a weapon powerup, levelling their gun to level 2, hence the little text flash over it. The game feels a bit more cluttered but way more accessible. I won’t have to explain heat and powerups in a lengthy tutorial now, so I think that’s a fair tradeoff!

I’m filling out all the odd corners of the game. It’s feeling much more complete now, though without bosses, menus, challenge modes or anything it’s still miles away from release. Still… it’s slowly getting there.