It’s been quiet on the blog, but not on the development side of Shooter, which is now named “Zen BWV”

A few of the changes:

• The game has a name! Zen BWV
• It’s a relaxing shooter. Zen for the relaxing part, BWV for the (J.S. Bach) soundtrack;
• Retargetted to desktop platforms to increase development iterations;
• Actions synchronized to music.

And that’s not all. You can play an alpha version of the game here

Lets discuss our enemies “AI”. AI between parentheses because you can’t really call them smart. They are not intent to anyway. They are intent to be predictable and easy to overcome. They need to get their strength from their numbers, not by matching your great skill. This is my guiding principle when designing enemy AI. Just like bullets, enemies need to show cool patterns on screen. Read More…

Let’s talk about what makes the main game loop work. As a refresher: the main game loop is move forward, dodge projectiles, shoot incoming starships, watch explosion, rinse/repeat.

As a basis, I use the setup as illustrated in the Cooking With Unity 2D Shoot-em-up series Read More…

Last week showed very little progress because of family engagements eating away at development time. So I thought I’d take this moment to look back a little at how this project came into existence in the first place. Read More…

Welcome to [Shooter] (working title). the game I’m currently developing in my spare time. And welcome to this blog which I use to give some insight into the progress. In its current form, I have a one-level prototype of the game, containing most of the standard or required mechanics such as win/lose, scoring, upgrades, boss fight, etc. Read More…