Calling the Plows!

Today I created the Plow Class ship. This ship has a shovel like shield that charges down towards the PDF. These ships give more point when their shields are active and when they are in Dig Mode. 

Pretty quickly I realized that the strategy of this game is going to higne on The ZQF(Points) management. I am thinking of each level as a chess board and your ZQF is part of your strategy. With the Plow class, I came up with the idea of different states giving different ZQF. This is part of the chess game. Each level you have to decide your strategy based on the pieces on the board, their states, and your positions, weapons and speed.

Right now, with the Plow ships you have to decide to take them out fast or focus on generating enough ZQF from attacking pawns to cover damage done by the Plows. And each new ship will contribute to this strategy.

Right now, Each Plow ship decides a timer for it's Dig Mode at the start and then each separate ship will attack at different times. This will also add some replay value as there is a lot of randomness already to each class of ship. So this is evolving into a rougelike in some ways. Which is close to what I already envisioned, an arcade game where you start from the beginning and fight your way through as many levels as you can and generate a high score. Now, your strategy every time you play will be altered slightly as the ships decide each time how they are going to play that level.

Going forward, each ship will have this strategy mindset. How can this ship force the player to make decisions on ZQF? How can the ships and potentially obstacles(thinking about that now) force you to make quick decisions on which ship to attack, when and how.

Still very much in the alpha stage, but after only 3 days of work, I have made great (frustrating) strides. My goal is to make this game an arcade game so I have to worry less about a complicated save system and more about the gameplay. Which gives more freedom in designing elements of the game as I won't have to worry about makings sure I can serialize them for saving.

I have been playing a lot Galaga and similar games to study what they do that makes them fun and addicting, And hopefully I can bring those elements to my game here with my own twists.

Stay tuned for more!