plowin’ through
i love finishing a big task, especially one that i’ve been putting off for weeks. checkpoints! it’s so common we take them for granted, but they’re not trivial to implement…i know i wrote the damn thing, but my engine is like a black box. i add stuff to it daily, but i try not to think about it on the whole…however, implementing checkpoints (saving states periodically, so if you die you go back to that point in time) forced me to figure out what exactly determines my game’s state. saving/restoring state isn’t the hard part; figuring out WHAT to save is. do i save every bullet position? what if an enemy’s exploding just as i save state? should i save every particle? i currently saving as little as possible…it’ll be interesting to see what, if anything, i missed.
i also checked off another big box…upgrades! guns and lasers gain power now, and now that we added karl’s art, the visuals change as well, making you feel like you just got a shot of adrenaline.