Sky Hawks Update 2 news

So we've been participating in the Ludum Dare October Challenge. I’ve used it as a venue to talk to other Devs, but more importantly, give Sky Hawks a concrete deadline. The contest is simple, make a game, release a game, make a dollar. I don’t think I’ll finish the game by the end of October, but October 31st is a good milestone. I’m hopeful that I’ll have a playable game to share by the end of this year.The contest has given me an actual way to measure progress. From week to week, I give myself to do lists. I break these into daily tasks. I also try to keep doing weekly update via the blog. It’s motivating to see constant progress, as it has an snowball effect. By contrast, I used to keep a large list of vague goals such as ‘finish scoring system’. While its good to know the overall scope, it can be daunting to have large parts of work where visual progress is minimal. I also have a team, so I really need to show them how their work is being used. My new objective is weekly builds. I don’t have much that I’m willing to share with the public, but it’s helpful for the team to see how their work is coming together. Unity is great as I can instantly test ideas. This will come in handy when the project further.

So far we’ve finished a few things:

• Collisions: Players can die, as can enemies when hit
• Bomb Powerup
• Graphic User Interface: the amount of lives and bombs are represented graphically
• Score: The player scores when enemies die
• Enemy paths: I didn’t really know how enemies in 2D shooters worked, my coder is a rockstar, and he figured out how to code paths for our enemies when they are created

So we’re still in the foundation stages, but there’s some art coming in now. My other coder also figured out how to do a nice scrolling background so here’s a video below. Enjoy!Next up: Turrets, More Powerups, and a boss.

Here's some screens: