Howdy everyone! I’ve made quite a lot of progress this week, so for the first time here’s an example of the full game so far: linked here. Now, it’s not at a point where I could call it a game without being disingenuous. However, we’re getting close!
The Enemies are Moving!
Last week, I showed y’all the pathfinding algorithm in action. However, it was simply one big algorithm for the whole program. Now, as new enemies are spawned in every 3 seconds (another addition this week, by the way), they can each find their own path. They all make the same decisions at the moment, since they have the same obstacles, but in the future this means they’ll each be able to adapt on the fly!
You can Place Towers!
You can now actually place towers! Or at least, white squares that don’t do anything … YET. You may recognize some of their functionality from the barriers in last week’s demo!
They also have one other new ability you may notice: They cost gold to place. (Not real gold, thankfully, or else I’d go broke just testing this!) Every tower you place causes 20 gold, and clicking a tower again to remove it provides you a 50% refund. Next week, once the towers can fight for themselves, they’ll earn back some of their costs by defeating the enemies, but until then, you’ll probably get stuck with 10gp in your pocket while playing.
Top tip: refreshing the page refills your wallet!
And of Course: New Textures!
Just yesterday, Project Ascent looked like this:
While those placeholder colors were helpful, they were certainly an eyesore. Now, thanks to the pixel art of DanielThomasArt (I recommend checking their work out!) and p5.js’ image() function, we have this new, much more pleasant view to look at:
That’s a bit easier on the eyes now, isn’t it.
That’s all for this week! It’s not quite a game now, but we’ve got most of the fundamentals, so look out next Tuesday for the towers and enemies to finally meet through PROJECTILES! See you then!
–Siph the Dev