Alpha 0.60

Star Fort Defense

Devlog 2

TL;DR: Alpha 0.60 focuses on implementing the start of the fort defense gameplay, by allowing the player's units to shoot at a target and destroy it when enough damage has been dealt. Music and some sound effects have been added, and a very rudimentary AI was implemented, but repeatedly broke, and as such needs to be redesigned.

Focus

Most of the work towards this update went towards making the units' weapons less ceremonial, and more functional. Currently, two weapons are implemented: a pistol, and a rifle. The rifle shoots farther and faster, while the pistol has the potential to score a critical hit.

To facilitate testing these weapons, a very basic enemy unit has been added to the game. One minute after clicking the "Begin Game" button, enemy units will start to spawn west of the fort. They will continue to spawn at a rate of one per second for three minutes. Once those three minutes are up, the spawning system will wait one minute before spawning the next batch, also at a rate of one per minute. At the moment they just stand there, waiting to be used as target practice.

Other changes

In addition to the above, I've added basic sound effects, sourced from the royalty-free websites Zapsplat and Soundbible, and simple music, created using Chrome Music Lab, alongside the start of a day/night cycle that determines both when enemies spawn and what music is playing. The game also has its own icon, rather than using the Game Maker Studio default.

Next Steps

The focus of the next update will be finishing the user interface and providing the player with a way to get more units over time.