Immunity Devlog 02
Immunity: Level Progression
Good afternoon everybody. My name is Kyle and I am the CEO/ Founder of Vicci Entertainment. If you haven't visited this page before, welcome! I am so happy to have you here, and I welcome you on our adventure into Immunity. Immunity is an arcade shoot-em-up game focused on dexterity and tactile organization. You play as the lone white blood cell; fighting off waves of enemies that only have one goal: eradicate everything in their path.
Today I would like to talk about level progression. Many games use level progressions as a means to challenge the player. It is what makes a game re-playable and fresh everytime you play it. Some developers use random events, and some use a linear system. For Immunity, I have decided to use a linear system. It seems to be the easiest to implement, and can be expandable. I can make this expandable by using waves.
A fractal noise image.
Inserting inspiration thought!
What if the difficulty system LITERALLY emulated waves? I can use a randomly generated fractal, seamless noise image that ranges from black [0] to white [1] -- map the values to events that fire specifically at certain values to speed up enemies, change their direction, etc. I can then change the frequency of the "waves".
Well, that could work. However, I also have to consider the amount of time for computing and traversing the pixels array; considering this may be a 512x512 image, that's an xn^2 time-to-compute method itself. Perhaps my math is off, it usually is.
Anyways, as I was saying before my mind went completely off track: I need a more scalable progression system for Immunity. I opted out of using actual levels and making a difficulty based on the level. I wanted one seamless main level where, based on the user's score or even amount of points accumulated in a day, became progressively more difficult.
I started thinking, "Well, what would actually make the player keep playing day-after-day?" I looked into using In-App purchases that instead of using real money, used in-game currency. Player, of course, would be able to purchase in-game currency. (Hey you gotta make money somehow to make the next game right?) Then, players can use the in-game currency that they acquire after each round they play to spend on spawning powerups, more cooldown times, etc. during their next rounds (Some purchases could last multiple rounds?)
It's a lot to think about.
I do want to hear from you guys to find out what would be the best fit. This game is for YOU GUYS, so please let me know.
Much love!
- Kyle Snelgrove
Our content, your amusement!
