This week we have continued our journey towards the beta-version of “Dash Bat” (originally “Heartbeat Bat”). My main objective for this week has been to include the mosquito swarm -enemy into the code. These are tightly packed clouds of super aggressive mosquitoes that will slow down the bat.
These enemies will be very useful in our levels since without them we only have obstacles originating from the ceiling or the floor. These swarms will give us the ability to place extra obstacles in between our regular rocks and icicles. The swarms will also give the player a little more to think of when playing. Since the bat can dash we want these enemies to be “dashable”, that means that the player can either avoid them, or if he/she has a dash-move available, dash trough the swarm of mosquitoes that will disburse.
At this point they are just classes in the code, not really implemented but they will work basically the same as any other obstacle in the game. They will have a sprite and a hitbox, they will also be placed in the same basic grid as the other obstacles. The different with placing the swarms is that they will not be placed on the top or bottom of the screens, instead they will be placed in either 3 or 5 different lanes in the center portion of the screen. Like this:
000001000000010001
001000001000100000
000001000001000001
Think of each number in a row as a horizontal coordinate in the level. The rows itself represent a set vertical coordinate (lane) on the screen. In this example “0” represents an empty space and “1” represents an enemy.
The other things that makes this different from the static obstacles is that these swarms have their own movement. Some of our obstacles already have vertical movement like the spiders that attack from the ceiling or the icicles that drop on the bat. But none of them has any horizontal movement. By giving these swarms movement we can give the player two different types of variation from the usual level. If we give them a speed towards the goal of the level, then they will move slower on the gamescreen giving the players obstacles that they will have to predict. If we give the swarms movement speed towards the start of the level they will move faster than the static obstacles. Disrupting the players planned route making them have to make even quicker decisions.
Korv makes games 
Hello there!
So after a short read on your blog. Did you change the name of the game this week? Because I have not read your other blog posts so it would be nice if you can state that it got changed this week or if it changed later.
The 01 diagram do not really tell me the story as much as the picture on the top. So if I can read this correctly you decided to add a obstacle that is a ”swarm”. I can understand that it’s something that is swarming and it’s in the way of the player when he moves. So what does the 01 diagram means? Do you read the level in a 01.txt file? or how does it come to be or A more appropriate question how do you add the ”swarm” to your level?
I can only feel small breeze of information of what you did this last week. I can sense there is a wind there somewhere that would blow me away.
Other than that you have really done well when writing this blog you language and sentences are good and you have really done well there.
A little more information would have been awesome.
GillaGilla