No Weapons Side Scroller #2 It's been a bit over a week since my first entry. Unfortunately I've not spent as much time as I'd planned, in fact I've done zero coding until today. Thankfully today I managed to get almost all of the boilerplate I think I'll need out of the way and I can now actually work on some gameplay mechanics. I'm still planning to go with the grappling idea. The current thinking is around two core mechanics, a grappling hook crossed with a bludgeoning tool is the primary weapon - used to beat enemies into debris with the option of collecting the destroyed enemy on the killing strike. The second mechanic would be using the dead enemies as a projectile. Expanded out to a full game with multiple enemy classes (not necessarily the goal for the challenge), the different collected enemy types would have different characteristics when used as a projectile. For example a fast ship would become a fast projectile dealing low damage, but a big heavy bomber ship would become a slow-moving explosive. I'm hoping to have something rough running this week. I still need to think about power-ups in order to fulfil the challenge objectives. An obvious route would be to allow multiple grappling hooks to be collected, or an upgradeable limit on the number of enemies you can acquire. I'm also having a think about a theme/setting for the game. Until now it was ubiquitously going to be based in space, but the almost melee gameplay styles I'm imagining feel like they might fit a steampunk setting better. Perhaps I shouldn't stray too far form themes which have an abundance of good, free art, as that is definitely my weakest related skill. That's it for this week, maybe I can get a screenshot or video for next week. https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

It's been a bit over a week since my first entry. Unfortunately I've not spent as much time as I'd planned, in fact I've done zero coding until today. Thankfully today I managed to get almost all of the boilerplate I think I'll need out of the way and I can now actually work on some gameplay mechanics. I'm still planning to go with the grappling idea. The current thinking is around two core mechanics, a grappling hook crossed with a bludgeoning tool is the primary weapon - used to beat enemies into debris with the option of collecting the destroyed enemy on the killing strike. The second mechanic would be using the dead enemies as a projectile. Expanded out to a full game with multiple enemy classes (not necessarily the goal for the challenge), the different collected enemy types would have different characteristics when used as a projectile. For example a fast ship would become a fast projectile dealing low damage, but a big heavy bomber ship would become a slow-moving explosive. I'm hoping to have something rough running this week. I still need to think about power-ups in order to fulfil the challenge objectives. An obvious route would be to allow multiple grappling hooks to be collected, or an upgradeable limit on the number of enemies you can acquire. I'm also having a think about a theme/setting for the game. Until now it was ubiquitously going to be based in space, but the almost melee gameplay styles I'm imagining feel like they might fit a steampunk setting better. Perhaps I shouldn't stray too far form themes which have an abundance of good, free art, as that is definitely my weakest related skill. That's it for this week, maybe I can get a screenshot or video for next week.

from GameDev.net http://bit.ly/2GmX2lx