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[quantumpotato]

November 14, 2018: New Mode!

This has come a long way. Many paths explored and then pruned back to a solid core.

You kill your Past Selves.
They do what you do.
Kill them all before the Deadline reaches you.

Rock Paper Shotgun: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/10/27/best-new-indie-games-of-the-week/#more-488757

Feb 11, 2018: Bug fix http://store.steampowered.com/app/652000/Quantum_Pilot/

Oct 31, 2017: New Trailer




Oct 7, 2017: New Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFgl1OoefMs

July 23, 2017: New Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkEnjAXUg8o

www.QuantumPilot.me

[quantumpotato]

Update: Removed Email from the list per advice by playtesters that they don't email games to each other.

Completed Social Sharing. "I'm crushing it in Quantum pilot with X from Y clone ship kills. Can you defeat yourself? https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/quantum-pilot/id935956154?mt=8" . Fits in Twitter, I'm happy.

[quantumpotato]

Update: Added boost & laser speed powerups. It actually makes the game easier to have things move just a little faster.

You collect debris from killed enemies. 20 debris recycles into a ◊ used to make upgrades.



I think I'll leave the Scanner out of the game. I don't have a great UI space to put it in. I had to disable touch interception of "WAVE 3" (the original scanner spot), because I would find the game not responding (eating the touch) when I tapped just below the player ship.

A challenge, resolved: in implementing the laser upgrade, I found all the clone ship bullet's fired at the speed of the CURRENT player's weapon strength, not the strength the player had when they died. This was easy to fix by adding a (float)speed parameter to each of the bullet generation methods inside of the Weapons. I already had a method inside of Weapon to pull a speed, so that was easy to modify. I'm happy I built code that was easy to modify to support a new feature.

Also added a voiceover saying "again" if you lose but made it past the fourth level. Something more encouraging than "you died, game over" like so many games. I want people to have fun playing.

EDIT: The Scanner would make a clone pulse with a circle inside them shrinking down as an indicator of when they were about to fire. Multiple scanner levels would increase the time delay between the animation beginning & firing. It was a bit tricky to get the timing to work right with reversing directions in the (copied) turn iteration; when I got the timing advanced players but distracting for newer players so I feel comfortable leaving it out.

[quantumpotato]

Testing: A great way to check your grammar. Grammar fixed for social sharing. Also fixed a bug thanks to redoing the title screen where pressing the share button would not hide the social buttons.. which let you twitter while you tweet.

I'm in your social, networking your social:



Correctified grammar when sharing a score (so you don't sound uneducated and you don't think I'm uneducated):

[quantumpotato]

ok, got level selection in and it's working sweet. different levels = different weapons.

[quantumpotato]

Cleaner interface.. better sound effects and a scary deadline:

[quantumpotato]

Holy crap iOS devs, kamcord is AWESOME. They record your screen and then play it back so you can share on the twitter, book of faces etc. Super easy API, great interface.

See in action: https://t.co/9hik7JmkMp

[quantumpotato]

V3 is out! Drastically improved gameplay with a minimalist interface. No voiceover, no text, yet so easy an English Professor can play it! (Seriously, they're one of the beta testers)

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New gameplay video:

[quantumpotato]

So I switched over to desktop because it's way more fun. The entire game is redone with the core of "Clones copy you".

Link is www.QuantumPilot.me .

Yesterday I fixed the Exoslicer - a sin-wavy weapon that had its angles hard coded so it could only shoot vertically. It also messed up when it went off screen and wrapped around .. beautiful fail here:





Each bullet had the origin X of the ship it fired from set.. then would oscillate around that X position. So screen wrapping - it would be *way* away and accelerate madly.

I converted this bullet to behave with a r (rotation) and thruster. It always moves forward then oscillates between a -90-N degrees and a +90-N rotation thrust, giving it a smoother look.

Before:



super smooth but the timing was brutal. this new one has a shape sort of like your ship which I liked. This time the bullets move from moving in a straight line to turning faster, but the moving while sideways thrusting is smoother and easier to dodge. I like this better.

[quantumpotato]

I had the deadline that comes down the screen turn enemies red and make them aim at you -- cool effect but a friend showed me you can just strafe sideways, wrap around the screen, and their bullets will miss you easily..   

So now each ship only has a % of becoming red and locking onto you which adds tension & unpredictability.

The above update to the Exoslicer (sin wave weapon) means that Exoslicer clones can now face you and their sin wave inspired weapon will curve properly.

[quantumpotato]

I need to update the trailer. I found the visuals way too busy so I switched to a 2 color system. The background is always black, the rest of the colors -- ships, lasers, your score after a round and text at the bottom -- are always 1 color (well, except for something special I just realized I need to check!).

I took out the tutorial prompt (it's just move and shoot) and everything looks much cleaner now.

I updated every weapon giving each bullet a custom animation. They wiggle and pulse and it makes it much easier to tell where they're at. Enemy bullets use the same steady pulsation so it's easy to differentiate between yours and theirs in addition to which way they're moving.

[kalyrical]

Just checked out your Itch page and you may want to fix the capitalization in the game's name? It reads "Quantum PIlot", which kind of looks like Pllot. It's not very obvious its supposed to say "Pilot"!

[quantumpotato]

Just checked out your Itch page and you may want to fix the capitalization in the game's name? It reads "Quantum PIlot", which kind of looks like Pllot. It's not very obvious its supposed to say "Pilot"!

Fixed Thank you 

[quantumpotato]

Gameplay:

[quantumpotato]

My new Xbox 360 controller sometimes gets stuck moving a little to the left. I increased the controller threshhold to 0.15 on the axes.

To avoid abrupt movement changes, the X & Y inputs are handled:

Code:

var ratio = 0.85;
	    		x = (x > 0.15 || x < -0.15) ? x : 0;
	    		y = (y > 0.15 || y < -0.15) ? y : 0;
	    		x = x / ratio;
	    		y = y / ratio;

So going 0.16 will put you at 1/85 speed instead of 16/100 speed.

To help out players who are trying to go fast but missed just a bit (or if the controller is malfunctioning and can't reach the edge), I have this right after:

Code:

if (x > 0.9) {
	    		x = 1.0;
	    	} else if (x < -0.9) {
	    		x = -1.0;
	    	}

	    	if (y > 0.9) {
	    		y = 1.0;
	    	} else if (y < -0.9) {
	    		y = -1.0;
	    	}

This game is 100% gameplay. No cutscenes, no menus, 1 puzzle (after you beat the tutorial to get to the next section of the game), fluid transition between games. I'm proud of it. I hope you enjoy!

www.QuantumPilot.me

[quantumpotato]

I'm enjoying how dynamic difficulty works in Quantum Pilot between 2 skills of shooting & dodging.

If you shoot a lot, your current level gets easier. Subsequent levels get a lot tougher by demanding better dodging.

To make dodging easier you must shoot very accurately. This will make the clones not shoot very much so it's easy to skirt their bullets.

Shooting accurately is very tough and there's a risk mechanic: The longer you go without shooting looking for a clean shot & then you miss - this means the Deadline is much closer and you have to act quick to survive! You may have to revert from "Shoot Accurately" to "Spray and Pray" - switching the skill requirement next rounds from easy dodging to hard dodging.

I like how this emerges from gameplay instead of coded in like Resident Evil 4 or other dynamic difficulty games.

[quantumpotato]

I playtested last night and fixed a couple things in the ending bonus.

Also made the difficulty spike up on your next game - requiring 11 clones per round instead of 7. This only lasts 1 game though (unless you win again!)

[quantumpotato]

Latest is live on itch www.QuantumPilot.me.

Todo: Update screenshots.

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Messing around with replay engine on an older version