New Features + New Name

After some more research, unfortunately I stumbled on another project with the same name "Neon Barrage". Since I want to have a name that is kinda unique, catching and describes the concept a little bit, I had to come up with a new name...

After some time thinking, I came up the new title of the game: "Block Cluster"

I think this title describes a part of the core gameplay of controlling a cluster of blocks (i went away from describing it as "Paddles", since the blocks can be attached even in chaotic ways). On the other side, the title is quite catchy as a anecdote to the entertainment industry's "Block Buster", describing an entertainment piece having a large impact or momentum (hopefully this game will be like this at some point *wishful thinking*).

Coming to the new features I added to the game presented in the same fashion as in the previous devlogs:

New Features:

• 3 new turrets:
  • Spread turret: Shoots 3 small bullets with an angle difference of 45°
  • Barrage turret: Shoots 5 small bullets with an angle difference of 22.5°
  • Multi Barrage turret: Shoots 7 small bullets with an angle difference of 11.25°. These bullets are a little bit slower

Current features:

• Paddle Navigation (Moving and rotating)
• Support for Keyboard and Gamepad
• 6 types of turrets:
  • Gun turret: Shoots a small bullet straight to the other side, without aim
  • Cannon turret: Shoots a big, slower bullet straight to the other side, without aim
  • Precision turret: Shoots a small, faster bullet while aiming at the player
  • Spread turret: Shoots 3 small bullets with an angle difference of 45°
    
  • Barrage turret: Shoots 5 small bullets with an angle difference of 22.5°
  • Multi Barrage turret: Shoots 7 small bullets with an angle difference of 11.25°. These bullets are a little bit slower
• 9 types of Power Ups:
  • Shield: Makes all paddles invincible for a few seconds
  • Block spawn: Makes a single block spawn at a random position, allowing the player to stitch it to one of his paddles by colliding with the block
  • Slow down: Slows down time for enemies and projectile, while giving the player the ability to controll the paddles with almost normal speed
  • Stun: Stuns all enemy turrets, halting them from what they are doing for some seconds. (This can be used to block some spawn slots for the next wave)
  • Deflector: Deflects bullets for a short time, causing them to bounce off (not working for missiles)
  • Speed up: Increases the movement and rotation speed of all paddles for a few seconds
  • New Wave: Instantly call a new wave. All current turrets stop in their actions and begin to retreat (even if they have not shot yet)
  • New Power Up: Instantly spawns a new Power Up
  • Copycat: Copys all current paddles and spawns them at random locations. They are instantly owned by the player
• Paddle split on hit
• Stitching paddles together (or blocks)

Planned features:

• More turrets:
  • Mortar turret: Selects a location inside the arena symbolized by a shadow, dropping the bullet there
  • Artillery turret: Same as Mortar, but bigger projectile and faster drop
  • Cluster turret: Same as Mortar with a smaller projectile, but multiple projectiles at once
  • Laser turret: Shoots a laser covering the whole row or column with a small beam width
  • Missile launcher: Shoots a homing missile that follows the player for a short amount of time
  • EMP turret: Shoots a projectile in a random direction. When the projectile is destroyed (by colliding with other projectiles or a paddle), it renders paddles inside a big area uncontrollable for a short time
• All turrets will get variants. A variant is displayed with another color and has the same projectile profile, but will fire multiple shots before retreating again and/or have a faster fire rate.
• More Power Ups:
  • Magnet: Creates a force field around all paddle for a short time, adding a small force to nearby bullets
  • EMP Burst: Destroys all nearby projectiles in an area (EMP projectiles still activate their effect)

• Global leaderboard
• Adding animations for UI and game elements
• Make the paddles' controls smoother
• Polishing
• Make better graphics / sprites

Ideas:

• Give each block a HP pool so that they need more than one hit to be destroyed. This could be paired with turrets dealing different amount of damage and a Power Up to restore HP.
• The original idea was creating a bullet hell  evasion game with a mix of pong. So an idea was to integrate the ability to spawn player projectiles (balls) that bounce off the arena walls, destroying projectiles and/or enemy turrets. The player can alter the balls trajectory path by letting the ball bounce off paddles. With this, a Power Up to spawn a new ball would be a possibility.

Bugfixes:

• Items are still loaded in UI after Restart
• Spawned Blocks are still in the arena after Restart
• Start Timer does not start after starting a new match from the title menu
• After stitching together two paddles (i.e. after copycat), the paddles stay connected even after a connecting block is destroyed
• Blocks are not put into the list of the stitched paddle, so they didnt count for the "still has blocks"-check

Known Bugs:

• Currently nothing noticable. If you find something, feel free to report :) I try to find all the bugs myself, but that isn't always possible :)