DragonflyProject Update Aug2023 (Patreon)

Sorry bout another late post, but finally, the first love2d version that is playable! I'm very glad the distribution process for love2d is much easier so I hope to be able to post playable updates much more often from now on. Just download the .zip attached and it should work right out of the box. If there are any problems with running the game let me know asap and I'll do my best to fix it.

Not everything has been ported yet, only 1 background has made it in so far and the enemy formations are lagging behind a bit but the rest is on track.

I've got a new implementation of bendy lasers that have really efficient collision detection but struggle with the rendering. Maybe there's a way I'll be able to make that more efficient but for now it's fine. There are still no object pools implemented which means garbage collection will be working overtime, likely causing frame drop spikes whenever there's a lot of objects being created or destroyed. That being said I'm pretty happy with how everything else is running so far.

New features that I'm pretty excited about, with the ease of creating shaders in this engine I made a crazy new enemy and bullet explosion effect that I'm already starting to use elsewhere in the game and plan to use it extensively to define the visual style. Doubly helpful because it cuts out me having to animate cool explosions by hand. The gif below is an early example of the effect, you can check out how it looks now by playing it.

The Dancer is now fully implemented gameplay wise, but some of the other players are only partially implemented, but I've enabled all of them so I don't have to worry about it, just be prepared some player descriptions won't do what they say.

I've managed to find a nice a fairly simple 3d library that I'll be able to use to make the 2d backgrounds, it even has support for .obj files so potentially I'll be able to add more detail.

That's about it honestly, apart from a few new spells. I think going forward I want to just pump out a bunch of patterns and enemy formations with little regard for balance cause otherwise I'll get nowhere. Music is still struggle city unfortunately. I've stockpiled a bunch of ideas but the motivation to pursue them has been hard to come by. I think my perfectionist mindset is really getting the best of me recently so I reckon I just gotta pump out some stuff and do the perfecting later.

There is one main bug I've got my eye on, at seemingly random points the game freezes, I've got no idea what causes it but if it does happen to anyone who tried it out I would like to know where it happened if possible. Just be aware it's a thing that happens.

I wanna thank everyone for the support again, it's a little baffling considering how little I feel like I'm accomplishing lately but I really do appreciate it greatly.