Here’s a little update on Space Fury.

The docking procedure/upgrade in the original game works like this: between every wave you get a chance to dock and get a better ship. The original has 3 extra ships to choose from, which is ok considering there’s only 5 enemy waves. If you get shot in the original game you die but you keep your upgraded ship.

I’d originally made the remake like that as well. However when I decided to up the number of waves from 5 to 20, I also added an extra 4th ship to chose from. But suddenly the docking option became extremely intrusive – coming after every wave, so now I’ve changed it to appear only every third wave which is much better…considering there’s also 4 times the amount of levels now.

Here is a couple of pictures of the docking sequences: the left one is from the original game, the one to the right is from my version.

On sunday I had a friend over and I showed the game to him. Then he asked a question;

Him: “So, do you lose your upgraded wings if they’re hit?”
Me: “Err..no. Is that a good idea?”

I hadn’t occurred to me before, but after thinking about it for a few minutes I had the thought that “Hell yeah, lets have the player lose the upgrade if the wings are hit“. That was actually a pretty good idea, because it solves the problem of the upgraded ships being extremely powerful, so now you can’t just circle the centre of the screen and blast everything in sight anymore.

Oh, and I should mention that in the original game there is no collision detection (or at least only minimal detection) on the upgraded wings…bullets often pass right through, but last night I added collision detection to the upgraded wings…well, I had to if I wanted them to be destructible.

So now you’ll still die if the red part of your ship is shot, but you’ll start again with your upgraded ship (if you have it), however, if your wings are shot they will explode and disappear but you’ll stay alive.

I think it adds a bit of depth to the game…which it could use. 😀

You may have read that I’m expanding Space Fury to have 4 times the enemies.
Most of that is already done. Tonight I decided that if there are more bosses and more enemies, there should also be more powerups for the player.

Powerups in Space Fury are basically new ships to fly in. You start off with a small red ship and in the original arcade machine you get the choice to dock and add something to your hull. The original game has 3 extra hulls to chose from.

I’ve just implemented a 4th powerup/hull/extraship to chose from.
Here are the 4 expanded ships as they look now. The last yellow one is the new one.

EDIT: It was pointed out to me that the new ship don’t fit in so well with the 3 original ones, because it’s curved. I thought the idea was good at the time but I’m actually not too crazy about it myself – the glow gets a bit to intense because of the higher amount of lines needed to make the curved shape, so I may change the shape to something else when I get a better idea. 🙂