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Finally, controller support has been finalized, and it's every bit as awesome as it sounds. Also taking a look at the new special weapons.

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G'day!

Well, here we are again. It's always such a pleasure.
So lately I've been working mostly with input. More specifically, I've finished integrating support for Playstation and Xbox controllers.
At first I wasn't sure if the game would work well with a controller. If you're playing with a mouse, you can just place the crosshair over the enemy, and you'll know you're aiming the right way.
With a controller, it's not as easy, because you're moving the joystick in a direction, and not to a specific location on your screen. This means you'll pretty much have to guess where to aim.
Luckily, when I tested the game with a controller, it turned out really well, and I could aim almost as good as with a mouse. More importantly, I was having way more fun. So yes, Story of a Cube works really well with a controller!

Dynamic Input Switching

I made controller support work out of the box. All you need to do is plug in the controller and it will work. I've also made the system dynamic. For example, say that you're playing the game with a mouse and keyboard.
You change your mind, and want to use a controller instead. As soon as you move the stick on the controller, the crosshair showing where your mouse is will go away, and the camera's position will now change depending on which direction you're aiming, and not depending on the cursor's position relative to the player.


May not look like anything special, but there's a lot going on behind the scenes.

Special Weapons

Story of a Cube features a set of special weapons. Well, not all of them are weapons. Let's call them abilities instead. These abilities all share the same cooldown, displayed on one of the aiming reticles.

Cooldown

Previously, there was only one special ability; slow motion. This ability makes time four times slower than usual, and it looks pretty awesome. It's useful if you need to dodge a lot of bullets at the same time, or if you're having trouble getting past an obstacle.

While the slow motion is activated, it slowly depletes your white circle reticle, and when it runs out, it needs a few seconds to recharge. If it's recharged enough, you'll be able to activate the recently added, even more awesome abilities as well. So what are these new abilities?

Blink

I don't know why it's called this. It really has nothing to with blinking. I mean, we can all blink with our eyes, that's certainly no special ability. Anyway, someone apparently decided that blinking also should mean short distance forward teleportation. So that's pretty cool.
In Story of a Cube, the special ability of blinking will move you forward really fast. It depletes half of the cooldown-circle, so if it's fully charged, you can blink twice in a row. It's useful for getting out of bad places and dodging in the very last second.
The most awesome special ability is definitely the next one:

The Bullet Bomb

I like bullet hell games. A lot. I've taken quite a bit of inspiration from them when working on the game, and especially when designing this attack.

BULLET BOMB!
Hell yes!

The bullet bomb, for the lack of a better name, is an attack that fires a total of 216 bullets in a spiral around you. It requires your cooldown to be fully recharged in order to fire. It may seem a bit overpowered, and that's probably because it is. That's why you won't be able to unlock it until later in the game when you really need it.

Here it is again!

That'll be it for today. Go ahead and share, comment and follow on twitter if you feel like supporting, and thanks for reading!

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