The Fourth Demo of It Never Ends

I have been developing my newest 2D space shooter publicly with the hope of receiving constructive criticism as I go. Even though it isn't pretty, and pretty basic so far, I have been putting up a demo every two weeks to share the process with those who are interested in amateur game design from start to finish.

If you have a moment to try it, I would be grateful for some feedback.

Download it here:

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Below is the latest post from my site. Other posts and links for It Never Ends will shed more light on what it's about.

This demo has added the following:

More points to distribute to the player’s ship.
More range (1-5) for each system on the ship.
Improved responsiveness of player ship movement.
New movement AI featuring 4 different patterns (straight, tight/loose zig-zag & edge bounce).
Alien AI dodge option: Aliens might move out of the way when you fire.
The player’s firing rate is now working correctly.
The ship’s power generation should be smoother.

I didn’t expect to have the new movement patterns done, but I somehow managed it. In the future, I will add a few different movement patterns, and perhaps modify alien dodging a little. For the most part, I’m pleased with how it has turned out. Alien movement is now predictable after you watch the pattern for a little while, and that’s what I wanted.

The Future

The next step is to re-work the alien firing routine. I have most of it planned out. Aliens will fire only if certain conditions such as player distance, and their chance to hit is right.

Future versions will also give the aliens an energy supply. This means that when an alien’s energy is low, it will decide whether or not to spend its remaining energy on movement/dodging, or firing. It will be one of the AI options.

All of these changes are meant to keep the player on his or toes, and to provide a fair fight. I want there to be a little anxiety when you first encounter the alien waves. Then, once you fight them for a while, their abilities will become predictable, and you can create a strategy to defeat them.

Eventually, this will lead to my greatest challenge: Letting the aliens “evolve” from round to round. Again, I have the basic idea planned out, but fine tuning it should take a while.

Thanks, SolarB. I had no clue what you were talking about, but I read up on it a little. It has definitely given me an idea, although I am sure that I am not fully grasping the concept. What I think I'm going to do is create measures of success for each of the alien traits, and track each success in game. The traits with the highest number of successes will be kept, and the other traits will be randomized. I'm sure this is way easier in concept than in reality.

My original concept for an older game, which wasn't bad, simply rated the design as a whole. If it was 80% successful, 20% of the traits would change. Still, it did those changes blindly. This will be my fall back plan.