I'm not certain if the difficulty resets between play-throughs on the same launch?
The difficulty is tied directly to the score, so it should be reset at zero. If you want to force a difficulty multiplier (it goes up to 6x; I heard the original game had no cap on the multiplier, but...) to compare, hit one of the number keys along the top, 1-6. (I forgot to disable those debug keys for release, but eeh, it's a beta. :P)
Trivia: The 'thump' audio beat in the background is tied right into the wave generator -- every beat there's a chance of something spawning. Higher the multiplier, the faster the beat. Thumpa-thumpa.
Teleport is too random; would prefer it if it picked a random place on the opposite half of the map.
If a bomb is falling all the way on the left, MAYBE you can get there in time from the right side of the screen. It's kind of a desperation move. It's also used for shaking missiles that lock onto you. (Some missiles will just thud into the ground, but once in a while one will chase you across the ground -- warping to the other side (if you're lucky) is the only way to save you. Or just kill it before it gets down that far. ;)
All of this, including the purely random warp, are mechanics of the original game.
I actually did consider sliiiightly skewing the results in a certain direction, based on your controller input (so if you were moving left and hitting the warp button, you'd be statistically more likely to warp that way), but I realized I would be monkeying a bit too much with the original game design. If it wasn't a remake, I'd have done that to give it a bit more 'strategy'.
What's the difference between small and large bombs? Both seem to be instadeath, and I keep getting 3 high-speed bombs on the screen at the same time.
Then you better get killin' them, mister! :D Large bombs are larger, and easier to hit. (Lower scoring and probably slightly slower on average, too, if I remember. Or maybe not. Gotta check.) Smaller ones, the inverse of all of that. In the original game they were just called "spinners" and looked like little hurricane symbols. I changed 'em into something a bit less...abstract. But they still kill everything if they hit the ground. They're your #1 priority. That's what this game tends to come down to: prioritizing your targets. Bombs are the most important thing to clear off the screen. Guided missiles #2. UFO almost ties with missiles. And plain ol' rocks are the 'filler'.
The original game was basically you trying to stay alive as long as possible. You're supposed to sometimes get a raw deal and get killed unfairly. But if you're on top of it, the net wins will should outweigh the losses.
This is old home console arcade game logic, don't forget.
Seems there should be a limiter based on bomb_count * total_bomb_velocity, tyo keep it in the bounds of possible?
It looks like I have a max of 3 per type of enemy (so 3 large bomb, 3 small bomb, 3 large rock, etc.).
This is pretty slick, I have to say. I hope you had a good time making it.
Thanks, man. I had a blast. I've started versions of this game for every framework that I thought I was going to spend time in. Allegro, Flixel, a couple JS libs. But once I finally settled on Unity, a good chunk of this game's development was in 2014. And then it got back-burnered for a good percentage of 2015. Now I just want it out so I can move on to other things. :P I'll give it a couple cycles to fix bug reports, optimize it. It'd be nice to get a high score cart integrated, but that's starting to get into feature-creep territory, which is another part of what slowed down development... I was so 'in love' with working on this that I kept tweaking and changing things. That's fine up to a point...
Here's a question: whoever created those side shields that zap rocks that go off screen... why didn't they just place a shield above you and avoid everything? Good question. The real answer is, I needed an excuse to get rid of rocks that were outside the playing field, and hated to just have them vanish. Only after I implemented it, and patted myself on the back, did I see what a plot hole it presented. ;D