Working on the SHMUP was really interesting. I can’t say that I have played that many SHMUPS in my life so understanding the mechanics took a little bit of time. After all how can I make a specific game when I don’t really understand what the main elements are and what I am supposed to achieve with the code.
According to Fred Rojas “a shmup as any game where a single entity, usually a space ship but can be substituted for characters or animals, moves about the screen shooting down enemies while being attacked by all of them at once”
Figure 1: Super Galaxy Squadron (Swinnich, 2014)
I stated to look at the two main games my teacher mentioned in the assignment brief, Raiden and Ikaruga. Ikaruga’s game play centres around a really interesting mechanic that I have never seen before in a SHMUP. This is called the polarity mechanic.
Only bullets of an opposite polarity can kill the player so the same coloured bullets are absorbed and converted into energy for the homing laser. You can actually switch the ship’s polarity during game play . If you shoot an enemy using opposite polarity bullets this will cause double damage. You can see this demonstrated in the following picture.
Figure 2: Ikaruga (2009)
I would really love to implement a similar polarity mechanic in my game. I was thinking I could make the enemy fire for a specific time frame (say 15 seconds) and every time it ‘resets’ the bullets could randomly change into a different type. This week I am going to look into how they actually made the polarity mechanic work and see if it is something I can do along with the other stuff.
The goal of week 2 was to get as much work done as possible. Again I used the code that I was working on at home to start working on more requirements. Everything I did in week 1 turned out well. By saying ‘well’ what I really mean is it does that it is supposed to though my code does not look as fancy as what my teacher has done. With scripting I either over complicate everything or over simplify. Finding a happy place in the middle is important to my scripting future. I over complicated the last assignment I did for scripting far too much and ended up not being able to focus on the important requirements. To stop myself from getting distracted I am making sure I stick to the requirements first and add in little extra things later down the track.
Working off the requirement check-list I have completed two and a half requirements and am now ready to complete another by the end of this week.
Requirement Check List:
Completed:
- Create a simple, top-down SHMUP mechanic similar to Raiden/Ikaruga.
- The game must contain a simple, scrolling environment .
- The player has 3 weapons – lasers, guided missiles and nukes .
To Be Done This Week:
- There must be at least 2 enemy types with simple seek and shoot AI .
- The game must have a HUD, title and game over screen.
Work Next week:
- There must be appropriate use of audio and music
- Enemies can drop health and ammunition to restore the player’s resources
- There must be a final boss which poses a more difficult challenge
Refrences
Swinnich, A. (2014) “Super Galaxy Squadron” Retrieved from:http://indiegames.com/2014/06/retro_shmup_super_galaxy_squad.html
Rojas, F. (2012) “What is a shmup?” Retrieved from:https://gaminghistory101.com/2012/02/29/shmup/
(2009) “Ikaruga” Retrieved from:https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/cf/Ikaruga_01.jpg
melasher 
