Introducing the factory
Hello! After finishing my birthday celebrations, I got back to work on Hyper Bun Buster’s arcade mode. I made some tweaks to the scoring system and started building a new factory area, complete with a giant claw machine!
Scoring system changes
I wanted arcade mode’s scoring system to give bigger rewards for taking out lots of enemies in a single hit, so I tried out all sorts of changes to the scoring system.
Some of these changes were pretty extreme, such as completely replacing the old chaining system with a combo counter. But after trying out several different changes, the one that felt the best to me was simply adding a combo bonus to the old scoring system. Now when you hit an enemy into lots of other enemies, a combo counter appears in front of the explosion and rewards you with extra gold coins:
NOTE: The combo counter stays on screen for a second longer than this, but it fades out using 30Hz flickering that doesn’t show up at this gif’s framerate.
The factory and the claw machine
I drew the environment sprites for a new factory stage! It has metal floors, dangerous green slime instead of water/lava, and walls inspired by pinball table bumpers.
The factory also has a giant claw machine! For the past month I’ve constantly been thinking about the idea of a big claw machine that can drop enemies, bombs and powerups onto the player. It just seemed like a perfect fit for the game's chaotic atmosphere.
The factory stage felt like the right place for this, so I gave it a try, complete with rudimentary swinging physics. Here it is in action:
I love it! At this point I have everything I need to make the game’s arcade mode, so I’m going to start building out the final stages using everything I’ve learned about making interesting combat encounters. Hopefully next time I’ll have some new and improved arcade stages to show off!
Anything else?
I played a ton of arcade games on my birthday including Panic Park! Whoever came up with its evil control scheme is a genius. More videogame controllers need to be built like bumper cars...
Speaking of games on my birthday, I got gifted Mamorukun ReCurse. I always wanted to like the original arcade version of the game but using a vertical screen to play a game that has so much lateral movement always made me feel like a horse wearing blinders. Being able to play this new version of the game in landscape mode makes it so much easier to tell what's going on! I'm having a great time with it. Maybe I'll be able to enjoy the original arcade mode now that I've had a chance to learn the stage layouts on a horizontal screen, but this port did a great job helping me get started.
I've recently been obsessed with Rolling Bird, a free game that plays like the old arcade game Rolling Thunder except with randomized levels. Fighting large groups of enemies in open areas is almost guaranteed to end in death, so you have to use the terrain to your advantage if you want to survive. I've played a lot of games with randomized levels that feel the same every time you play them, so I'm amazed how different each playthrough of Rolling Bird feels. I hope I can make a game like it one day.
Astro Climber is another free game I've been having fun with recently. It's a brand new release for the SEGA Master System to celebrate the console's 40th anniversary! It's a vertically scrolling platformer where you use your grappling hook to climb upwards, like a mixture of Mr. Driller and Bionic Commando (Arcade). I'd really like to make a game like this one day too!
That’s all I’ve been up to recently! I’m going to go play more Rolling Bird and think about claw machine combat encounters. I hope you have a wonderful couple of weeks and I’ll see you next time!