Posted June 28, 2020 by tmirobot
v1.3 changes:
--- GAMEPLAY ---
o Lowered the number of screens per planet, and randomized the chance of extra screens on later planets instead of always having them be bigger, which:
1) makes the game easier
2) varies up the landscape more frequently
3) presents the player with a win feeling more often, making the game more fun overall.
o Removed the increase in enemy hit points on later planets, as, with no visual indicator, it’s confusing and not fun to discover deep into a run.
o Removed the need to press up to enter the ship, removing the need to learn another action
o Fixed a bug where your high score wouldn’t be updated when you win the game
o Changed screen clear score to take into account planet difficulty
o Changed score to not be stored as decimals, as score should never get close to 32k and conversion used tokens. Forced new save version to _13, to clear old scores as this and gameplay changes make old scores meaningless.
--- VISUALS ---
o Adjusted the HUD window size so that the full vertical play area can be seen properly
o Added a HUD prompt when near an item, instructing the player on how to pick it up
o Adjusted the title screen to be centered better, shifting all status displays a little higher
o Added random flavor text dialog strings to the crash sequence
o Added flavor text dialog strings that describe the overall difficulty of a planet upon landing
o Added ability to specify a blood color for death particles (robots no longer bleed!)
o Renamed the “talk-o-tron” to “tele-tron”, to better match its concept
--- AUDIO ---
o Added a sound effect when entering the ship at the end of a planet
o Added a sound effect for the Planet: Cleared banner
--- CODE ---
o Updated the include pico-8 package to v0.2.0i (netting some free tokens!)
o Added back in code comments I had to remove a long time ago for .png format space and reorganized code for better readability
o Recaptured a bunch of tokens through various methods (multiple if chains converted to “if ands”, some ifs that weren’t necessary (nil checks when nil is ok), a few missed multiple assignment lines, a few unnecessary assignments in reset() and other functions, a few never-used code paths (extensibility that was never used or generic functions that are only called in one place), and other assorted cleanups.