Development Roadmap

Graph Paper Shooter Development Roadmap

Roadmap is perhaps...um...overstating it.

This is a bulleted list of things I've finished and things I need to do. I will update as I get things done and as I come up with new ideas.

Change Notes for August 15, 2018
Change Notes for August 8, 2018
Change Notes for August 6, 2018
Change Notes for August 5, 2018  

Change Notes for August 4, 2018
Change Notes for August 3, 2018


As of Aug 1, 2018:
  • Gamepad support.
  • Core movement mechanics for player and enemies
  • Core shooting mechanics (standard bullet, AoE)
  • Bomb mechanics (auto-exploding and player used)
  • Core scoring mechanics 
  • Core powerup mechanics
    • placeholder graphics - replaced with new graphics
    • bombs
    • movement speed up
    • fire rate up
    • bullet power up
    • health powerup
    • increased pickup radius, might need to make it bigger
  • v1 of "dimension" generation mechanics
  • Core spawner mechanics
    • How many spawners per room
    • placement so that they're not on top of the player
    • Static vs. player tracking
    •  hp, score, destruction effects
  • Core Enemy mechanics
    • hp, score, damage to player
    • movement and fire rates
    • destruction effects
    • facing mechanics (can you get behind them?)
    • non-shooting enemies
    • shooting enemies
      • shots with custom behavior (such as homing)
      • shot collision mechanics w/player and player shots
  • Moving from "room" to "room" and dimension to dimension
  • One boss which acts as proxy for dimensions which need bosses (which is all of them)
  • Main Menu 
  • Place-holders screens
    • options - done
    • next dimension - done
    • beating boss - WiP
    • game over - done
  • Current player shooters types:
    • UFO:
      • missile rig
        • Slow firing AoE 
        • Upgrades give multiple missiles and point defense
      • lazer rig 
        • Fast firing
        • upgrades give super fast firing, multiple shots and wide fire angle
    • Space fighter - custom rig, (will be unlockable)
      • upgrades give super fast firing, multiple shots and wide fire angle
    • Geometry Warrior - custom rig, (will be unlockable)
      • upgrades give super fast firing, multiple shots and wide fire angle
  • Basic sound management code 
  • Debug level score UI and menus 


Still on the list, which grows just about every day:
  • Refactor everything, always
  • Pause functionality
  • More Rigs for the UFO player shooter 
    • Saw blade shooter
  • More Player Shooter types which will take the same rigs as the UFO
  • More unlockable ships:
    • The Cat-A-Pult
      • Seriously, it shoots a sack of cats 
    • The Original Prototype (added back into game as unlock)
    • The Fried Egg - shoots eggs, which makes no sense. ( no idea how to unlock this )
    • Hover Tank (using standard rigs)
    • Dead Eye 
      • beholder looking thing which shoots lazers
      • Unlockable after beating giant tentacle eye boss
  • Code for unlocking the ships
  • ALL of the sound design. Right now, pretty much every thing is a placeholder
  • More dimension types:
    • More bosses
    • More enemies/types
    • More wall tile sets
  • Bosses and Fights for currently known boss types:
    • Bullet Hell rage modes implied for all of the following:
    • Polygon of Horror for Polygon Wars dimension
      • artwork done, needs implementing
    • Super Tank for TANKTANKZOMBIE dimension
      • again, main artwork done, need implementing
      • machine gun nests/pillboxes need artwork, code
    • The Mimic
      • artwork in progress
      • will throw random D&D crap at you
      • also, is bitey, possibly with giant tongue  
    • Release the Crabken
      • part Crab, part Kraken
      • Bitey
      • Slappy
      • throws squids at you, amongst other things
    • Giant Tentacled Eye thing
      • There will be lazers
      • Lots of badly drawn eyeballs
    • Robbietron
      • Robotron inspired level
      • With giant RobbieTron boss
      • Will unlock new player ship, grids scheme
    • THE OUTSIDE
      • Boss: THE SUN
      • critters and other outdoorsy things
  • Additional background layer overlays so that we're not just looking at graph paper
  • Figure out why video capture doesn't pickup the "normal" graph-paper background
    • Think it doesn't like the blue. 
    • Other grids added as unlockables
  • Mouse and keyboard support.
  • Powerups:
    • New graphics (done)
    • Maybe further increase pickup radius
    • Maybe see if I can keep them in the room
    • Tweak powerup frequency 
      • Figure out "normal" difficult spawn rate
      • Tweak other difficulties appropriately
    • Maybe limit number of spawned powerups
      • It's kind of nuts when you clear the room with a bomb and the screen is just littered with bouncing powerups.
        • Current thinking is "Maybe not"
  • Pretty up the score UI, get rid of debug info
  • Screens:
    • Options (done)
      • volume (sound, music)
      • full screen toggle
    • Difficulty select
    • Player shooter select/unlockables
    • Next Dimension (with summary of previous dimension) 
      • Keep track of how many of each enemy killed
    • Boss Intros
  • File handling:
    • Saving high scores, unlocks, and settings
  • Difficulty balancing:
    • Certain dimension and player ship combinations are basically impossible
      • problem is combination of default enemy HP and starting player strength
    • Missile Rig is essentially easy mode
    • Balance out health degradation mechanic
      • This is much better now, but probably still needs balancing (see Aug 3 notes)
  • Bomb explosion effect is smaller than bomb effect radius.
    • Either make a new effect (from scratch), or make the radius smaller
  • Difficulty Modes:
    • Mom-mode (as required by The Mom)
    • Easy
    • Normal
    • Hard
    • Bullet-Hell
  • Additional enemy death effects  
  • Ability to set graph paper theme