Changes are:
Levelups: There are 10 levels right now. I might consider adding more, but let's see how these go. Each level has a distinct play mechanic, ooze color and difficulty. Some are harder than others, some leave ooze behind for the next screen, etc...
Ooze spreading: Before, if you chose to just sit there and camp out on the fire button, nothing bad happened. Now it does. The ooze spreads out when it hits the bottom. This slowly causes you to lose your playspace to the spreading ooze, or take a hit on your ship to go clean it out. Best keep the ooze at bay now.
Accuracy: Missing the ooze results in a delay to your weapon. Also, it can affect your score as the score counter will not increment during the delay of a missed shot. Not too big of a deal right now, but when the bonus target returns, you just might find your bonus won't count for missed shots. Also, some levels are tough. Not being able to fire will affect your ability to keep the ooze at bay.
For now, no target for powerups. Those are planned once I scrunch the code again. The infrastructure is there however and most of the powerups work. (Just no way to get them.)
So, what I am looking for this time is the viability of these ideas. Given some tweaking, in terms of the level length and parameters, does this make for a better game experience overall? If so, I'll go ahead and get it done with the powerups, etc... If not... let's just say I'll think about it for a while!


I've got a bit of work to do on game start and end code. When you power up, or start your emulator, the game just starts. Reset starts a new game. I'll fix this when other more important things are done. (Like having a real game to actually start!)
As always, any and all feedback welcome. This is a lot of fun, honestly!
Edit: Forgot. The level parameter data is stored in the leveldata statement, right after the drawscreen. (Well, close.) Feel free to tweak these for your own level combinations. If you find good ones, please share!
The first parameter is the level time, second one is game tweak flags (fast, slow, etc...), third is the ooze difficulty (smaller is harder bigger is easier), fourth is ooze foreground color, fifth is background color, with the remaining parameters unused at the moment.
Edited by potatohead, Mon Aug 15, 2005 10:05 PM.