Published on 4/14/2012

So with the submission deadline for Indie Cade coming closer, I've spent some time polishing up the game. And fixed a lot of bugs. And worked some more on the effects, specifically for night time.

Simple stuff like a main menu on the title screen and an in-game pause menu seemed easy enough, but as it turns out there were some real problems with my disposing and switching between the different sections of the game. Also, I had a bug in my sound code that caused some sounds to continue playing irrespective of the game being paused. This same bug is also what caused some strange sound corruption issues.

The effects I worked on was mostly explosions and other combat effects, like the missiles and rockets. Fighting at night time now proves to be way more epic than day-time, simply because of the updated effects. Tracer rounds now fill the sky, and the explosions at night time are pretty awesome to behold, specially on moving vehicles. I've added a small integrated tutorial as well, the end of which is visible in the shot below.

I also added actual geometry for the rockets and misses. Both have an illumination map, making their tail-pipes visible during the night. At day time they're not really that easy to spot though, due to size and speed. The missile is visible below the chopper in the following shot.

The HUD-integrated pause menu is also visible in these shots. Additionally, when landed, there is another in-game menu in the same fashion where later options to save the game and select upgrades will appear. Soon the build for the submission to Indie Cade will be made available to the public, so watch this space.