Finished up Versus Mode, today. Finally.
I had convinced myself it was done before. But really, all it was was just the regular game except with a custom AI for the ship that listened to keystrokes instead of performing its own evaluations. This had the downside that the games always played out the same way as survival mode. (Namely that the boss always died, and the only real variations was how long it lasted and how many spaceships it took down in the process)
So while you could still make your own rules, (“let’s see if you can kill me in less than 3 minutes this time! And no dying more than twice this time either!”) it occurred to me that it wasn’t much of a versus mode if the same side won every time. Really, if I’m expecting this sort of play pattern, then shouldn’t I be doing more to support it? At the very least, the victor should get some little graphical flourish announcing their triumph at the end of the game, right?
An Unexiting Screenshot
Well, today I finally got around to doing exactly that. Set up an interface so you can define rules like how long the spaceship has to kill the boss, or how many respawns it gets in the process. Changed the game-end message in vs. mode depending on who won. And even gave the players a hook to decide how frequently ship powerups dropped, since that seems like a useful thing to be able to control in a competitive setting. I already had most of the hooks I needed in the game, so mostly this just required setting up a UI. (Bleah!)
Also set up a way to swap which player got which side of the keyboard, since my left-handed friends were starting to grumble.
Unfortunately, UI work does not generate the most exciting screenshots. Oh well. Have a boring screenshot of the versus mode UI then.