Build 0.50.0a: improving gameplay mechanics

Greetings! Thanks for dropping by! So here we are, it's time for the yearly upgrade of Second Legacy. As usual you may skip directly to the end of the article for the full release notes, or stick around as I go over the notable changes in more detail.

Full rewrite of cannon and bullet subsystems

This is one of those under-the-hood things that when well-done should not be noticeable at all. My main goal this year was to be able to add more variety to the game without writing new code everytime. The few enemies that were already in the game up to this point had hardcoded bullet patterns with custom functions. I rewrote everything so that all bullet patterns in the game are now described by data instead, relying on a combination of signals to control things like aim direction, firing rate, initial velocity, etc... There are yet a couple possibilities I'd like to add, but this will be a more incremental process from now on.

To help recreating identical bullet patterns to those already in the demo until now and creating new ones, I wrote a separate tool that allows live edition of bullet patterns while seeing them in action.

All in all, this is where Second Legacy starts becoming a full fledged game and not just a prototype. I did take my sweet time!

Boss encounters and EX bleeding

Another thing I wanted to do this year was to improve boss encounters. Until now they were more or less a mandatory part of the game that I had quickly put together during the early years of the project by glorifying a big enemy with a health bar, different music, denser bullet patterns and a big fat hack to create sort of a phase transition in the middle of the fight.

While I was rewriting cannons and bullets, I had to keep enemy code compatible and took this opportunity to introduce properly designed attack sequences and multiple phases support.

So now a boss encounter may have multiple phases, each of them with a range of attacks that have a given probability to be triggered. Between each attack, a cooldown allows the player catching their breath and repositioning. But this is not all.

After playing the game a lot myself, and watching other people playing it as well, I started thinking that boss encounters did not allow players to rely on EX a lot. Most of the time, a player would save EX for the boss encounter, then use it up for damage and try to survive for the rest of the encounter. To make boss battles more fun, I introduced the "EX bleed" mechanic.

To get a boss (or a big enemy in general) to bleed EX, you'd have to shoot them with normal fire (a bit more difficult since your movements are not slowed down) to build up energy, then just like with normal enemies to rely on focused fire to harvest the built-up energy. With minor enemies, harvesting energy would usually happen during their destruction, but here instead, bosses gradually bleed out energy, hence the name of the mechanic. This allows the player to recharge their EX tanks and be able to engage EX mode multiple times during the battle, making it way more fun.

Another important thing is that when you harvest the energy a boss or big enemy has bled, you greatly raise the chance to stun them. And when an enemy is stunned they take more damage. This effectively allows making short work of a boss, even if they have a huge health pool, provided that you manage to slip through their bullets.

Upgrade of bullet visuals and feedback

If you've played the game before today, you are likely used to bullets looking a specific way. This changes now, as bullets color and shape are now determined by their gameplay function and lore consistency.

For instance EX mode bullets have traces of pink, which is the color associated with active EX in the game.

Enemy bullets have a slightly different tint whether they are aimed at the player ark, or fired in an independent direction.

Polished demo soundtrack

We are in 2024, and today marks the 10 years anniversary of Prime Legacy, the musical prequel of Second Legacy. For the occasion, I doubled efforts on polishing the demo's soundtrack to release a free music album.

Over the years, most tracks changed here and there, often because I would arrange them in different styles to develop better harmonies or counter-melodies. The richer, polished soundtrack featured in the game today is the result of mixing together a NES version and a Sega Genesis one. I hope you like it!

You can get the mastered Second Legacy demo's soundtrack in the format you want from Bandcamp here.

Input diagrams

I had almost forgotten about it as it does not show unless you set up input mappings again, but I added generic controller diagrams to recommend specific buttons to players when remapping, or visually show controls when using a known controller type preset.

RELEASE NOTES - 0.50.0a

Gameplay

• The EX repair mod is now usable alongside the EX mode ones
• Added enemy EX bleeding mechanic, integrated it with enemy stunning
• Now causing a boss to yield EX when the forecast gauge is full instantly stuns it
• Now the EX forecast loss rate is reduced by 75% when not firing
• Balancing of boss encounters (HP vs EX)
• Less cannons and bigger, more damaging bullets in EX-mode
• Doubled the amount of energy stacked when using normal fire while EX mode is engaged
• Raised the EX beam and shieldbomb DPS

Presentation

• Redesign of all bullet sprites
• Polished the whole demo soundtrack for a separate album release
• The player ship no longer rotates continually in EX-mode unless bypassed fire is on or the EX beam is fired
• Added more SFX for more detailed feedback about hot/cold and critical/normal damage
• Added controller diagrams to control setup and preset screens when relevant
• Flash the ex gauges when the necessary condition for opening the alternate route is fulfilled
• Fixed manual game state exit missing fade out
• 2nd player HUD fixes
• Improved procedural background sideways scrolling
• Score display now changes color when scores can be registered

Logic

• Full rewrite of cannon and bullet systems to be data-driven and make new enemy design easier
  
• Rewrite of enemy code to support multiple phases and attacks
• Rewrote the ship selection screen state so that it behaves like a regular landing area
• Now exiting a landing area can lead directly to the next actual gameplay stage
• Changed display order so that items and awards are below the player's ark, for better readability

Bugfixes

• Fixed a long-standing bug causing vsync to be cancelled when switching from windowed to fullscreen modes
• Fixed the fact that players could register scores multiple times during one run
• Fixed EX beam and shieldbomb damage so that is is framerate independent
• Fixed a bug in image training causing a shockwave to be fired when colliding with an enemy
• Fixed the fact that one could not milk EX from boss enemies in image training
• Fixed a crash caused by uninitialized player data when requesting to reselect a ship from the image training menu
• Fixed bug with the stunning mechanic that could cause boss pre-explosion to last forever
• Fixed a bug causing d-pad emulation to be disabled when returning to the main menu from the ship selection screen
• Fixed the fact that EX could still be stacked after both player explosions by chance if an enemy destruction happened after them

Thanks for reading me! As usual if with this new version you notice something broken, feel free to contact me. I will be continuing work on enemy and bullet pattern variety now, take care and see you next update!