AverageSoftware's Development Blog - Magical Fairy Force

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Back with another Magical Fairy Force update.

I've gotten some new things in place, and some of the gameplay elements are starting to formalize in my mind. The first thing I got working was shooting. Each player can now fire, I used a pair of missiles for each player, so the projectile is four pixels wide. Looks great so far.

I also started to add the first of the gameplay elements, I call them wisps.




Those little white things near the center of the screen are wisps. They span randomly, but identically for each player, although inverted along the X axis.

WIsps will shoot at you (they don't yet) and destroying them is very important, because it adds to your FAIRY POWER.

Each player will have a gauge for their fairy power. When you have enough, you press the top trigger to expend some of it in an attack against the other player. These attacks will be character specific, and still need to be designed.

If your fairy power gauge is full, pressing the button will perform some of sort super attack. This attack is also character specific, and I still need to design these.

So the general flow of the game is to kill wisps to build your fairy power, then unleash it on your opponent until one of you loses.

One of the key elements of Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo and Twinkle Star Sprites is the idea that attacks against your opponent also serve as ammunition to be used against you. This is something I really want to apply to this game as well, but I'm still trying to figure out exactly how that will happen.

I've also spent a lot of time lately playing Centipede and Millipede trying to get a feel for how the trak-ball should behave. One thing that has become clear to me is that my current trak-ball code sucks. It needs to be way more sensitive than it currently is, so I'll need to spend some time in front of the TV tweaking it.

I've also finalized the character roster. I have eight characters planned, and I'm really hoping I have enough ROM space to cram them all in there.

http://atariage.com/forums/blog/656/entry-15134-magical-fairy-force/