Update 23: Alpha 1.6 - Lots of stuff finally released!

Alpha 1.6 has been released. This represents about 10 months of (part time) development, and is finally a little mini game. Admittedly a game without much depth, but still a game! Included in this release (since Alpha 1.5) are:

• New cameras
• Timing fixes all over
• A very basic AI
• New character models and animations
• More dynamic explosions
• Targeting indicators
• More advanced stress testing
• Links to the currently active test levels
• And lots of little bug fixes

This is all pretty exciting to me, and I've started working on a story/theme for the next step, while I also add in some feature requests and refine some of the mechanics a little.

Try it out for yourself and let me know what you think!

http://www.samsmithnz.com/content/tbe/tbe_alpha1.6.zip

Update 19: Alpha 1.55 - Targeting and More Dynamic Explosions

Continuing with my momentum, I've implemented a new mechanic based on some feedback I received. When the camera zooms in behind a player to shoot, it now shows a partially-transparent-targeting-indicator. It's now a little more obvious who you are aiming at, especially when there are a cluster of enemies close together.

I've also been working at creating more dynamic explosions. In Version 1.45 I had created a prefab that contained little blocks. When the prefab was hit, I'd basically pull down the wall and let the little blocks explode. While effective, I found that when I scaled up from a 10x10 level to a larger 30x30 tile level, that the prefabs and all those little blocks really hit the frame rate pretty hard. 

To solve this, I wrote a little class that divides the parent object into a series of smaller cubes - created when I need them. Then instead of a million little cubes buried in my level, the cubes aren't created until they are needed.

Here is a sample before:

And after: 

Next on the list is some timing and camera improvements.