Serendipity. One of my favourite words. And, a particularly apt one at the moment.

The original problem with the ants led to me creating 8 spawn points for the ants, in an effort to control them better. That has actually turned out to be a rather good device to use for all the insects in the game. By having holes in the ground, any insect that I wish to spawn has an instant starting point. The main benefit of this is that since the insects always spawn from the holes, I don't have to check that they aren't about to spawn right under the Doodlebug. Basically, if the player is parked on top of a spawn hole, and gets killed because an ant spawned up his jaxie, then it really is the player's own fault he died!

But, the fortunate part for me is that it has led to a better structure for the game. So, whereas I was having random spiders patrolling outside the screen, I now have a random spider appearing at a hole, running in and firing a web at the player, and then running back to the hole. What this has done is to allow me to increase the speed of the spider, and therefore attach a greater score to it, too. Since the spider is now more of an annoyance than a fatal enemy, it is fitting that shooting one can give quite a bonus.

And, since the spider now exists not to kill, but to trap, it allows me to play with the ants. So, when the spider succeeds in webbing the player, I can now make all 40 ants roaming the screen turn into hunters! Naturally, this does mean that the web will only slow the player down, rather than incapacitate. Or, possibly it just stops the player from shooting. I shall have to test both scenarios before making my decision.

Another ant idea was to maybe make one out of every five ants be a red ant, which hunts rather than wanders. Currently, there are always 5 ants from each hole. Shoot one, and a new one spawns instantly. This large number of ants means that the player will never need something to shoot at, but will always have to be watching out.

I also created another bonus enemy ; the gnat. The gnat also appears at a hole, then flies about the screen at a quite ridiculous rate. He carries HUGE points, depending how long he has been on screen for. He is also not fatal.

The next bit is to put the centipede back into the game. I have decided that centipedes will spawn at the corners, but don't know if I should keep them as single-spawn, or to perhaps have them spawning at all 4 corners at the same time! Whilst this will no doubt be stressful, it also has the potential to be quite thrilling. Which leads me on to my major decision. How to increase the difficulty level? One way is to have 40 ants at speed 1, and then increment the speed ever so slightly every time an ant gets shot. Do it gradually enough, and what starts out as a harmless element soon becomes a real problem. Remember, there will ALWAYS be 40 ants on screen, and at times they will be hunting you down!

Another possibility is to define a set of pre-determned attack waves, and just call more and more of them as the score increases. So, attack 1 might have 1 spider, from a random hole. Wave 2 might be 2 spiders, from polar opposite holes, while 3 would then be 4 spiders at the same time. The idea of 8 spiders is very amusing, but it could be too fatal with really fast ants. I have to try all this stuf out when making the game, which is something I never used to think of when I just played them.

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	YumiLyokoAngel1 - September 01, 2007 (08:49 PM) Hi CheekyLee are you a girl? Cause' I am