News carousel

After making so many changes, I decided to make a basic news popup to share the release updates.
I know just few people are playing it but at least, I want them to be informed of the changes!

That’s how it looks like.

I’ll submit this version to Apple in coming days. I’m currently testing it a bit more.

Jet pack gunner and boss

I’m done with designing the enemies of the level 5. I added a gunner shooting 2 bullets at a time and a boss.

I do like his style

The boss will be the cat wearing a suit introduced in the level 4.

The AI of the boss is quite basic. It does a lateral moves in a loop and canons shoot forward while the turret rotates and aim at the player.

Alright, now let’s build some waves, add a bit of tutorial, and put some dialogs!

Should be completed over the weekend!

Level 5 – Concept

The level 5 will be the first level with a shooting sequence.

The level starts with the introduction of another NPC. He will be present in some of the following levels where technology is involved (should be level 8 and 10).

Introduction to level 5

The level 5 reuses the work I previously did on the shooter mode. I’m making the AIs to have a basic variety of enemies. It’s really inspired of various Space Invaders like games. And I really want to keep my 2D/3D work to the bare minimum here. I just created some basic animations and I’m using the same jet pack for everybody. It’s low cost but with a bit of colors and sFX it starts to be ok.

Basic enemy not firing

Gunner firing 1 bullet at a time

Muscle gunner cat firing humming rockets

There is a fourth enemy that I’ll do who will be firing bullets in 3 directions. And finally I’ll do a simple boss. So far so good.

Testing the enemies

I hope I can finish this by the end of the week and get back to classic levels!

 

Masks for gunners

In the level 4 I introduced the gunners and I realised they didn’t really stand out.
It was not really easy to noticed the difference in the texture: Gunner cats wear red pants, but that was it. I just added a mask so whenever we see a masked enemy we know it’s a gunner:

Gunner after I died

Same goes for the Heavy Gunner (who will appear really later):

Heavy Gunner

Same goes for the flying cats of the level 5. Yeah, level 5 got flying cats… 🐱

Level 4: Gunner and scripted bridge

I just finished the level 4.

This third ans last part is under the rain again and it finally introduces 2 things:

• Scripted bridges: Just like in the introduction of the level (showing the scripted event with the cats), destroying an explosive barrel will trigger the fall of a rock. Here it will enable the player to cross.

I’ll reuse this mechanic later for sure!

• Cat gunners: In the introduction one gunner shot the explosive barrel so I thought it could be a good level to introduce it as the last enemy of the level. I feels like it’s a bit tough but I’ll have to let some people try it so I can adjust.

Alright: 4 levels completed. Let’s proceed with the next one! 💪

Underground

As mentioned in the previous post, part of the level 4 is happening in an underground.

Underground map

Nothing fancy there. It reuses most of previously introduced enemies, props and mechanisms. The length of this part is slightly longer than previous though.

Bats flocks can be seen here and there

2 cages are hidden in the map

Let’s continue with the next part of the level.

 

 

Level 4 and scripted events

I’m currently working the level 4!

First boss character – A business man

I’m making this little rabbit a bit more cynical

So far this level introduces:

• A first weather change with the rain
• A first cat antagonist: Nestor
• A scripted event with the falling rocks
• An underground phase

Regarding the fights, it doesn’t introduce anything new, but it reuses known enemies in harder waves.

I still need to do the 2nd part of the level. It will be under the rain again.

 

New style

I’m currently working on the customization of the character.
I decided to give more personality to the rabbit in the process. So I changed a lot his texture.

The red lines around the eyes are seams from Blender… Well I’m not an expert but I finally understood it was a mistake to “cut” the eyes from the face to begin with (at least for such a flat design). I learnt my lesson.

Regarding his new facial expression, I had some feedbacks saying he looked quite angry. I guess it’s fine since he kills cats.

My plan is to do 2 other skins at some point and call those “new characters”, change slightly the gameplay and sell them as an in-app purchases. Why not?

Anyway, if you don’t like the colors you can change that. Check my following post for more on the customization.