Patch 1.1 and Musings on What's Next

Hello! This is a small patch to fix various little bugs, address some feedback I've seen, and add some (mostly engine) features that were driving me crazy that I wasn't able to add in time.

Changelog

• Removed Vulcan from mission 4 (wasn't meant to be there).
• Fixed a catastrophically unoptimized mistake that was copying every particle per particle.
• Added frame time graph to the debug info (accessible with ~).
• Added a "max frame time" of 10ms per frame. If frame time exceeds 10ms game just runs in slow motion.
• MUCH more accurate FPS counter.
• When asteroids break up smaller ones don't spawn outside of the original asteroid.
• Levels are now unlocked when you first reach them rather than complete them.
• Added logo to the main menu.
• Added version number on the bottom right corner of debug info.
• Changed final mission completion message to be more accurate.
• Improved impact effect for bullets.
• Stage music resets on new stage start.
• Rendering resolution/aspect ratio decoupled from window/final resolution! Fixes lots of little bugs and inconsistent imagery on different computers.
• Game runs in a permanent 360 pixels high image.
• Default window size is now 1280x720.
• If window resized <360 pixels high the resolution will be 1:1.
• Edited some of the mission intro text for clarity.
• On respawn, the player has 3 seconds of invulnerability.
• Text pops up on screen to confirm weapon change.
• Changed zipped directory so the game can be downloaded on the itch.io launcher.

What's next?

This is probably going to be the last patch for this as the game is already doing everything I wanted it to, plus a little more, and is ended up being pretty fun! There's a sweet spot of difficulty and accessibility that I think this game is hitting. I also think I'm really enjoy the "make small game then just call it done and move on" model as a contrast to my ongoing years long experience with Tiny Combat.

Looking back, this game being as fun as it is, was the biggest surprise in this whole thing. The same goes for my last game too. Something about these simple little games is a lot more fun than I was expecting. Being so simple and short I think has a lot to do with it, but honestly I think they're being carried super hard by bouncy and positive vibes the Musmus music has.

I don't have any concrete ideas yet for what mini-game I want to do next with this engine, just a short list of technical "requirements" or ideas for features I think would be fun, interesting, and useful to add to the engine. Right now, off the top of my head they are:

• Probably fully 3D, though not sure if first person or third person yet. Final test that my matrix math for "actors" works.
• Still in space or some abstract void, because sky/terrain introduces so many complexities I don't want to deal with yet.
• A depth buffer! Please! Not having one is driving me crazy and the asteroid depth sorting is actually the game's bottleneck.
• Support for models and model importing.
  
• Sprite sheet animations (for explosion sprites).
• Some kind of lens flares! Just basic billboarding additive sprites, but I really love classical sprite quad lens flares.

Based on all that, it'll probably end up some kind of simple space sim? Though, I really want to keep the controls as simple as possible and avoid any fancy input schemes that necessarily come with introducing any kind of analog controller. I've had Colony Wars on the mind lately, along with several other Psygnosis games like Wipeout and Rollcage, so that's where my headspace is right now for this weekend enginedeving.