Madlem Update Feb2024 (Patreon)

Playable download:

https://blindvoid.itch.io/madlem/download/9tAKLtKz16ytTco3O0JFt3kyA9LOZ64uoRL6_5m6

What's new. For one, the sprites for ALL currently implemented items are now complete. Here are most of the new ones.

I've sped up the processing of rendering yet again, hopefully I won't have to touch it for a while but since I've also set up a new profiler that isn't so laggy (F12) finding the bottlenecks won't be as hard as before.

MUSIC has been added to the stage and bosses! It's still not finished but there's finally something there to fill the silence.

Stage acts are now selectable from the practice menu, allowing you to test any act at any rank. Though, the menu is starting to get pretty bloated, it could do with a redesign very soon before it becomes impossible to find anything. With this I've been able to improve some acts and intend to work on them more in future. Current favourite is the act with all the Vulture enemies, it's undergone some changes and I'm really happy with how it looks and plays now.

There are some new bullet sprites to spice up some existing patterns and to help inspire new ones. I was getting a bit tired of using orbs for everything so it was about time I got around to making some new ones.

I've also started designing all the enemies I want to appear in the Sunder stage. The birds and the jellies I think will be able to be reused for other stages but the Portrait and Kraken will be unique to Sunder. The Kraken in particular I want to be a rare midboss or stage hazard type fight where it mostly attacks from the bottom of the screen as it rises from the lake of blood, though it might be a while until I get around to experimenting with that. The big jellies I would like to behave like battleships in other shmups, having multiple turrets (eyeballs) that can be shot down individually.

I've even gone ahead and already implemented a resprite of the Jellies that were already in the game and they are lookin super nice. These new enemy designs should help inspire some new interesting stage patterns.

Unfortunately I never got around to fixing up the player sprites so they still look goofy as hell. I've just got done with the jellyfish sprite so I'm really in the mood to draw up some of the other enemy sprites very soon and hopefully bring that motivation over to experimenting with the player sprites some more as well.
I think over the next few months I'll be able to spend a lot more time on this and also take commissions more seriously, my hope is to have lots of cool new sprites to show off and likely a finished music track (the motivation is finally kicking in).