Happy halloween everyone! I'm Dennis, and I'm developing Bazooka Blitz: A fast-paced 2D platformer inspired by Pizza Tower in which you have a bazooka. It's been half a year since the last devlog and the game is still very unfinished. Let's jump right into it!

What's new?

The character movement is itching closer and closer to finalization, which means it's time to animate a LOT of animations. It's takes a surprisingly long time to make even a simple animation, but I think it's all worth it in the end. Making a bunch of animations also help me improve, which is getting more obvious to me when I compare my newer animations to the older ones. I will most likely remake a few animations that I've already made to make them look better, but the focus right now is to finish the animations that aren't made yet.

I'm also doing some level design, which is much easier now, mostly because the character is much more fun to control, but also because I'm using GameMaker (Fun Fact: I actually made a level editor from the ground up when making the Unity version of Bazooka Blitz, which made the process easier but was still very sloppy). My old workflow for making levels was to just make it up as I go. I thought of a shape for the room to be and kind of placed stuff inside. My new method consists of finding challenges for the player and making them in a sort of playground room to see what works and what doesn't.

This is what the game looks like right now in the only tiled level right now, which is the tutorial. The most noticeable change compared to the Unity version is the UI, which I decided to reimagine mostly because the old UI was pretty bad. The score is now shown on a wallet instead of a cash register and your level progress will be shown on the paper underneath (saved captives and letter grade). There is also a new element in the lower right corner showing your dash meter, which was added to make the new dash mechanic more clear to new players. Lastly there's a monitor in the upper right corner, because why not?

Controller support

Adding controller support is more complicated than one might think, especially for a game like Bazooka Blitz. The game uses the mouse to aim with, which works well when using a computer, but is much more difficult on controller primarily because of two reasons: 

1. On PC you aim by choosing a position for the bullet to go. On a controller you aim by choosing an angle.

2. You can't (comfortably) use the right stick at the same time as the buttons.

All of this is to say that I've added aim assist. Your aim is now a cone instead of a line. If there are any enemies inside of the cone, the bullet gets shoot to it. Not only that, but the bullet predicts a point that both the enemy and bullet will meet at if the enemy is moving. This makes controllers more viable and also makes it easier for new players to do well.

Closing thoughts

I know this devlog isn't the most packed, this is mostly to show that I am indeed alive and the game is still being worked on. Anyways, here is a short video to show of the game right now:

Bye