Posting a devLog message here to keep me motivated because it feels like I have 50% of a game already. With the announced release of Season 2 in 2025 I've picked up my Play.Date again and I want to progess my game 'Lone Fury' (working title) - an unabashed Bosconian clone. I'm old enough to remember playing this arcade upright in arcades, so wanted something similar on my Play.Date.
It's coded in Lua on Linux using vscode, a set of purchased assets for sound, and some obvious Bosconian inspired graphics. These dev forums have also been a great help.
Here's what it looks like so far (you don't usually start with eight enemy bases, this is a stress test level):
A more interesting feature (I think) is the formation flying squadrons that appear if you dally too long destroying bases. They can fly in several different formations and chase the player using simple chase 'AI'.
Next I plan to add:
- High score table + input + putting it in attract cycle. Well supported by the Play.Date SDK fortunately.
- Mines! Which featured in classic Bosconian.
- Level generation: There's a whole level definition system, and a level manager in place that ramps up the difficulty and scale of the levels. Levels are pre-defined at the moment, but I'd like to make the level manager responsible for placing bases and obstacles in a pseudo-random fashion so each level is unique but of similar difficulty.
- More sounds! I have plenty of assets for this, just need to find suitable opening/launching/death music in there.