Changelog:
-1.0
--Changed _update60 back to _update (probably will be another game)
--Black Cats no longer rush you, they just try to cross your path
--Another slight increase in rate of fire
--Spotted Cats show up sooner, and they also drop power-ups
-0.3.1
--Changed _update to _update60
-0.3
--Added laser power-up
--Added cats with guns (shows up 60 secs into the game)
--Slight increase in rate of fire
-0.2.1
--Added life bar
-0.2
--Added bomb power-up
Let me know how the speed, controls, and difficulty is. Thanks!
Oh, the ninja cats drop a bone powerup(?)
Didn't realize it made your shots better at first, ha.
Haha, Mochatron 2084. Originally, I was gonna make the second player dpad for shooting to make it a true twin stick, but I wanted to see if I could make it work with one controller.
Yeah, the ninja cats drop a bone powerup. It can be faster shots, triple shot, and the just added bomb, which will explode all cats. Also made the bones worth 50 pts.
Still trying to figure out increasing difficulty (and difficulty in general), maybe a 16x16 cat with hp that appears after so many points.
Your solution to only having a single d-pad resulted in a pretty cool control scheme. I'd say the way you used the x button creates a more interesting set of moves to learn then a standard twin stick shooter!
The game has a really good feel. The screen shake and sound effects are great. The enemy spawning is a bit inconsistent, which really affects my score. I can only break 1000 if I get a steady (but not too quick) stream of the black cats.
I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes!
I really like this, has lots of promise!
I remember Llamatron on the Atari ST & Amiga & DOS PC, which was a Robotron clone with one button and a 8-way control.
The way this worked was that without the fire button the bullets would fire the way you are moving, which is sometimes what you want. With fire button held, the bullets would be locked in the current moving direction, and then you are free to walk any way you want and the bullets will keep firing the other way - useful when you want to just sideswipe a wave of bad guys. Let go of the fire button and the bullets fire the way you are moving. This kind of toggling of the bullet lock was really quite versatile.
Try the DOS version: https://archive.org/details/msdos_Llamatron-2112_shareware
Hmm... not sure if I like the auto-fire, as much as I miss locking aim.
I might be going the wrong way here, but gonna try a life bar. It takes 2 hits to die, but if you let go of the fire button, you can heal a bit (taking this idea from Vlambeer's Luftrausers), and then be able to take another hit.
Let me know what you think. Right now, I'm not sure if I even like it, but it sure does make it less frustrating when cats with guns who fire at you spawn (which might be coming soon).
Your game already has (very slow) autofire if you hold the fire button?
Ahh... sorry. I meant endlessly firing without holding/pushing a button.
Will try a faster rate of fire.
Hahaha... hit program too large when trying to add boss fights. Need to figure out a way to optimize my code (and write better lua code in general). This is my first PICO-8 game.
Was trying to have a purple cat gang scare off the other cats after scoring 2500 pts, resizing the arena to 4 possible horizontal bars, locking aim either up, down, left, or right (like a traditional shooter, can only shoot one direction, in the direction of the boss cat). The boss cat coughs up hairballs at you and has hp. Minion cats occasionally fire at you too.
Oh well. In the mean time, added a laser power-up, cats with guns, and slight increase in rate of fire.
If I can't get the above to fit, maybe will work on polishing this up, fix spawn rates and locations and balance. Work on difficulty in general.
Switched it back to _update. Gonna try make another game using _update60, hopefully with a bigger arena (or maps) to have space to run in.
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