The BlitzMax OOP engine has… erm, grown. It’s now nicknamed Blast Engine (because project folders need names more than anything) and, despite being a single command engine at the moment, can lob a frighteningly complex array of nasties about the place! Rings of nasties, bosses that zoom on, decellerate and sit there, spinning and spitting out bullets, randomly placed popcorn… all possible and for the boss type nasties the game can be told to wait until all aliens have been destroyed before continuing!
There’s even some nice cosmetic details so nasties and player both have muzzle flashes when they fire, bullets spin majestically as they tumble through space and the bigger nasties have larger explosions based on the size of their collision area. Here’s a still screenshot of the code running in windowed mode:
Blast Engine - preview 1
After i’ve experimented a bit more to see where the restrictions are, tidied up the code a little (there’s a naughty little array in there that i might convert to a linked list if it seems more efficient) and generally fiddled with the thing, the next step will be to see if the nasties can be given a series of movement commands as with the Vinculum engine; if that works i want to add a similar system for firing patterns, essentially meaning the engine on it’s own can handle relatively complex boss battles!
