Big Update

A long time between blog updates due to the festive season. Rest assured that a lot of progress has been made!

Creating an ice cube with circle burst snowflakes

• Light sources have been added to the editor. Each square can have up to 3 directional lights plus ambient light. This takes the look of the game to a whole new level.
  
• Dynamic in-game lights. So far, I am only using this for doors. They have a red light when locked and a green light when unlocked.
  
• Circle-burst particle effect. Rather than have a 100 random particles, which looked like crud, I now use expanding rings of particles, such as fire for explosions and snowflakes for ice. Looks a million times better in my opinion. Plus it gives the game that retro look that I am after, rather than being uber-realistic.
  
• High friction tiles. Nothing can be pushed/pulled onto them, and anything on them cannot be pushed/pulled. I use them to surround my push puzzles to stop cheating (by pushing blocks off the puzzle).
  
• Player now takes damage and dies.
  
• Village levels are now starting to take shape.
  
• Doors are now unlocked by push puzzle triggers, where appropriate and relock when appropriate.
  
• Ice now melts over time
• Ice can be pushed into enemies for massive damage
• About a bazillion things under the hood
  

The development is starting to transition from game engine development to level design. Having said that, there are still quite a few things on the to do list for the game engine.

This morning work started on a 3D map selection map (for want of a better name). It something that requires little effort, but will look brilliant and will add that extra layer of polish.

Multiple light sources but still using BasicEffect

Circle burst explosion of an eyeTank

New enemy units: eyeTanks I & II

• New enemy unit - eyeTank : Stands its ground and fires a plasma ball at you. Slow rate of fire, but large damage and infinite range.
  
• New enemy unit -  eyeTank II : stands its ground and fires machine gun at you. Fast rate of file, but less damage. Range is infinite.
  
• Better looking fire particles
  
• Enemies now explode on death.
  
• Explosions cause damage to other enemy, allowing for chain reactions.
  
• Preliminary explosion particle effect with 100 random particles.
  

First enemy unit: eyeBomb

• New enemy unit (actually the first, thus far)...the eyeBomb! Basically, its a big floating eye that follows you around or should that be "chase". Either way, when it gets too close....BOOM! When you kill it, it also goes BOOM! They don't go BOOM, yet, but it is quite fun running from them and trying to make ice cubes to block them. They need a bit of path finding AI to get around things. Another possibility: Chain reaction explosions!
  
• Added better flame texture for Fire.

Ice, pull, doors, lighting, first real map

• ICE: Ice cubes can now be pushed. They don't decelerate until they hit something. If its an actor, they injure it with their current hp and destroy themselves. A formidable weapon!
  
• PULL: Objects can now be pulled from 2 squares away to 1. This is, of course, the opposite of PUSH. handy as an "undo" in the push puzzles.
  
• Doors can now be locked. Meaning they cannot be opened with USE. I use this in the test chamber to only allow you into the next room once the current puzzle has been solved.
  
• Test Chamber A is about 80% complete! this is  new map consisting of 5 push puzzle rooms and an observation room. This will basically acts as a tutorial.
  
• Played around with lighting a bit more. namely, the per-tile lighting. It works as well as I hoped! Even with one light, affecting blocks and actors, it is much better looking. Today's screenshot shows one yellow spotlight in a corridor. It is very light on FPS, as all of the calculations are done at design time, not run time.