This post was originally posted on the Scared Square blog on 19 Apr 2016

As I mentioned in the original post about Splodey Vaders, I’m planning on showing it at an event targeted at local game developers. I’ve never done anything like this before, other than Adventure X back in 2011. I plan on writing a post detailing how the event went, but before then I wanted to write an update on the progress of the game and outline some key features:

Score Multiplier

In Splodey Vaders when you shoot a Vader, they Splode. When they Splode, chunks of Vader go flying around the screen. If a Vader chunk hits another Vader, they Splode. This mechanic allows the player to create chain reactions where there are explosions happening all over the screen and multiple enemies are being killed. In the early stages of development, you would receive 10 points if you hit a Vader. If the chunks from that Vader hit another Vader, then you would get a score multiplier. This would times whatever the current score multiplier was by 10, in this case, giving you an extra 100 points. If the chunks from that Vader hit another Vader, then it would times the score multiplier by 10 again, giving the player 1000 points. This could get out of hand very quickly with some players getting scores of 10,000,000+. I decided to add a cap to this and reduce the amount your score can multiply by. If you shoot a Vader you still get 10 points, but if the chunks from that Vader hit another Vader then you get a multiplier of X2, giving you 20 points. You can then get X5 and X10 score multipliers by causing chain reactions with Vader chunks (you also get a nice pop up and sound effect telling you you’ve done so). All subsequent Vaders hit would be capped at X10 meaning that the maximum points you can get from any one Vader Sploding is 100. The score multipliers and chain reaction of explosions is a core part of the game. I also made the score pulse whenever you add to your score as an added visual que that you are earning points.

Trails

Sort of related to the score multipliers is the trail effects added to the Vader chunks. These can be different colours and the different colours correspond to whichever multiplier you have achieved. Initial chunks have a blue trail and if they hit any Vaders, the player will receive X2 score multiplier. The chunks from that Vader will have a red trail and the player will receive X5 score multiplier. The chunks from that Vader will have a white trail and the player will gain X10 score multiplier. The pop up text you receive for X2, X5 and X10 are also colour coordinated to match with the trail colours.

Controller Support

I’ve never added controller support to a game before, but it was incredibly easy to do in Game Maker. I decided to make it so that you can use D-Pad, either Analogue stick, shoulder buttons, trigger buttons or face buttons for movement to allow the player freedom of choice.

Penalties

In the game, Vaders can go past the bottom of the screen and it’s not game over. It’s only game over if you get hit by a Vader or a chunk from a Vader. However, I wanted to add some form of penalty to the player for letting a Vader get past. My initial idea was to have the Vader respawn at the top of the screen, but slightly faster and moving towards the player’s location like a homing missile. This idea came from Super Crate Box, where enemies will respawn at the top of the screen faster than before. This doesn’t penalise you in terms of your score for letting enemies past, but if you DON’T shoot them, the game will become harder. I also toyed around with the idea of having Vaders explode when they reach the bottom of the screen, but this proved too difficult to avoid the chunks firing out of the Vader. At the moment, nothing happens when the Vaders go past the bottom of the screen, the only penalty is the loss of potential points you could have got had you shot the Vader, but I may change this later on.

Difficulty

A lot of players seemed to find the game too hard to begin with. To combat this, I’ve made the base speed of the Vaders slower, made less Vader chunks fly out when they explode and reduced the maximum speed that a Vader chunk can have making it easier to avoid them. After showing the game to groups familiar and unfamiliar with the game I think I’ve found a good balance.

Other Changes

• Fixed bug where text was misaligned

• Made it more obvious when you die (red flash appears)

• Stopped the infinite Vader spawning on Game Over

• Improved Game Over Screen

• Background speed now increases with game speed

• Fixed bug which caused all objects (including the Vaders and Player - Ship) to disappear when Score Multiplier text faded out.

If you want to see the current road map for Splodey Vaders, I’m using Trello to track changes, fixes and features for the game. It’s an awesome site that allows you to easily track the development of a project. Splode Vaders Trello: https://trello.com/b/jTalmHfR/splodey-vaders

What Next?

Well Ga Ma Yo is on Thursday and I’ll be showing the game off there and hopefully gaining some good feedback from the cornucopia of developers there. After that I’ll be creating a PC version ready to make available on websites like Game Jolt and itch.io. The next major features to be added will be saving high scores after a session and beyond that some art updates and maybe different enemy types and power ups! In the meantime, here’s a video which shows off some of the gameplay from Splodey Vaders: