The slash lines are now weighted toward the screen's center a bit more, there are 4 more slashes, and it all goes 25% faster.

Dear god.



Also, a sword boss wouldn't be complete without a spinny attack:



All that's left now is to tie the attack sequences together and put in an outro animation. After that, I think it's finally time to address the controls... Stay tuned for another post on that matter.

Okay, let's talk controls!

The first version of Magnaut (technically Magno-Warrior) had some serious control issues. The main problem was that the attachments didn't arrange themselves automatically, and the ship pointed its front toward the mouse -- if you only had attachments on the sides, that made it pretty hard to aim. Obviously that's no longer an issue, but I still want to make sure that everyone can be comfortable with the controls.

Sadly, I just learned the other day that Flash doesn't have native joystick support. It's sort of possible to get it working in AIR, but it would be a huge hassle to get it functional cross-platform, so for the time being, I'm going to be leaving gamepad controls out.

So, what I've come up with is a few different PC-based control schemes that you can switch between. Also keep in mind that in all of these cases, you'll be able to re-bind the keys.

Method 1: Keyboard Only (Radial)


Description
You turn your ship manually, then can either go forward or backward. Firing is a separate button. Basically, this works like Asteroids. This is the one I've been using in all of the videos and pictures you've seen to date.

Pros/Cons

+ Easier to use non-frontal attachments
+ Movement looks more acrobatic and round
- Aiming takes longer
- Some might find the movement awkward, especially in intense moments

Method 2: Keyboard Only (Twin-Stick)


Description
You use a set of directional keys to move your ship, and another set to aim the attachments. Attachment firing is automatic while you aim.

Pros/Cons

+ Movement is intuitive
+ Can be plugged into Joy2Key pretty easily
- Aiming is locked to 45-degree increments
- If you're not using Joy2Key, it can be a bit difficult managing all these keys

Method 3: Mouse and keyboard


Description
You use a set of directional keys to move your ship, and aim with the mouse. Click to fire.

Pros/Cons

+ Aiming is faster and more precise
+ Movement is intuitive
- Harder to aim with non-frontal attachments
- Flash doesn't let me constrain the mouse (except in fullscreen), so that could get annoying in windowed mode

Any thoughts about controls?

Keyboard only seems a little awkward but the other two methods are clearly for scrubs.

I like to think of it like the control schemes in CC. Everyone's going to use mouse and keyboard, but true pros (read: masochists) will go for keyboard-only.

In all seriousness, though, I think the radial keyboard scheme isn't too bad — I mean, other games have used it. It definitely takes the most getting used to, though. I'll probably set mouse and keyboard as default, though.

Working on a background for the next world:

That seems a bit distracting, but it does look really cool.

how many worlds will there be?

Urch: It might be too distracting, yeah. If it is, it's not hard to turn down the contrast a little.

Miggles: The one I'm working on right now is the last one, so there'll be five total.

Is this game going to be costy once it's released? Because I'd totally buy it.

I'm planning to sell it for less than $10, probably closer to $5. The price probably depends a bit on what distributor(s) I end up with, since I'm sure they'll have some say in that.

make it about blocks and sell it for $27

Make the first level cost 1 dollar and every other level cost 10 dollars and make use of each weapon cost 30 gems which you can buy 20 of for 10 dollars .

In order to give players a true arcade experience, you'll be required to frantically fumble through your wallet for your credit card and send me 25 cents every time you die.

You should make some extra levels later on and sell them as dlc for twice the cost of the original game.

This last world is going to be pretty hard. Here's a video of me barely making it through part of it:



The two new enemies this time are a disk thrower, and a mine layer.

The disk acts like a boomerang, and will always return to its ship. Until it returns, you can't fire again. Of note is the fact that it's the only projectile in the game which can loop around the edges of the screen — otherwise, it can be fired off-screen and totally blindside you when it flies back in. I suppose that's kind of inconsistent behaviour, but it seems better than the alternative.

The mine layer lays mines, predictably! The mines are activated when an enemy comes close enough, and they deal damage based on how close you are to the center of the blast. They're quite effective against groups since they can immediately deal high damage to a large-ish radius. Each ship can only have one mine deployed at a time, so if it places a new one, the old one will be triggered. Hopefully that'll be clear to players. If not, then I might have to change the behaviour a bit!

Anyway, this might be the last video for a while. Next, I'll be making the final boss, followed by bonus stages and a seeeeeeecret. Aside from the bonus stages, I don't want to spoil all of that, so I might keep it under wraps for now. The good news is, once that's through, I'll be just about ready for beta!