ProjectDragonfly Update Jan2022 (Patreon)

So after working on the game for a while with GameMaker I came to the conclusion that it simply wasn't powerful enough to handle the amount of stuff I wanted on screen. I spent a long time trying to optimise the rendering and collision calculations of all those bullets and it wasn't happening. The most bullets I could fit on screen before the framerate started dropping was about 1,500 which was just no where near the performance I was looking for. That isn't even considering the fact that I want the player to have the opportunity to get crazy item combos that could result in them shooting a crazy amount of shots and that I would like endless mode to exist and scale the enemy patterns to crazy levels.

The end result of all this was just me learning C++ and making my own engine from scratch which I didn't wanna do cause C++ seems kinda scary to me and still does a bit. Honestly tho, the switch has opened up a lot of opportunities for the game and it's going great so far after only working on it for about 2 weeks. I already have a super efficient collision system that's built from a Quadtree system that simply wasn't possible in GameMaker, you can see in the pic that it's handling 10,000 bullets easily and my computer didn't even start making noise until around 14,000. I didn't test enough to see when the framerate starts dropping cause I'm gonna have to make my own visual fps system but I can imagine it can handle a lot more but 10,000 is already plenty enough for me to feel good about it.

The rest of the game is looking pretty jank right now, I still have to refine my sprite and animation system which are things I never had to worry about in GameMaker. Hoping to rebuild a lot of the main gameplay systems by next month, Stages, Enemies, Patterns, Bombs, dunno about items yet though they might be tough but we'll see.

Thinking about writing a little bit about the game each month for you guys if you're interested. I feel like I don't do enough here for the amount of support I get, so I assure you the moment the game becomes playable you'll get to play it first :)