With a lot of effort from the team and others from the IGDA-TC, we have launched Cosmotic Blast on the Steam store with support for the HTC Vive and Valve Index. Of course, we continue to support the Oculus Rift[s].
Hello everyone, we hope you and your friends and family are safe and healthy. Luckily for us gamers, we can continue to do what we love and promote a healthy lifestyle. (Not used to saying that.)
Ian Davis
This release is a big upgrade for those who like changing up the base ship. This new version has 10 new ships that you can unlock by playing the game or by buying them. I’m going to go over each ship and what unique about them as well as some other updates.
CEC – Default Ship
Description: This is the tried and true ship with three front cannons and one cannon each other direction besides backwards.
Animation: This ship has a spinning core that reacts to the amount of fire rate.
Color: Red
Available: Immediately
Ship 1A1
Description: With this ship, you can acquire a fan like array of cannons that can blast with a vertical plane of destruction.
Animation: None
Color: Red
Available: Level 10
Ship 1A2
Description: Like the base 1A1, this ship fans out a wall of bullets but as you shoot, the rig spins faster and faster, coving more area.
Animation: Spins on the z-axes as you fire.
Color: Black
Available: Level 50
Ship 1B1
Description: With front facing canons, this ship can focus a lot of power to where you want it. The draw back is to contain that energy, the cannons have to recoil when you fire.
Animation: Recoil as you fire.
Color: Red
Available: Level 10
Ship 1B2
Description: Front facing canons, recoil and now with spinning!
Animation: Recoil as you fire and spins up.
Color: Black
Available: Level 60
Ship 1C1
Description: Front facing canons, with no recoil and with spinning! How can this be!?! The recoil is contained in a random rotation on the z-axes.
Animation: The per shot spin is random.
Color: Red
Available: Level 20
Ship 1C2
Description: Like the base but with a fixed rotation on the z-axes. Like a revolver.
Animation: The per shot spin is fixed.
Color: Black
Available: Level 70
Ship 1D1
Description: This wide angle ship is my favorite. While others have suffered from recoil, this ship focuses its shot the more you shoot. Try this with full auto.
Animation: Focus Shot
Color: Black
Available: Level 30
Ship 1E1
Description: This one is a challenge. Just hard to play with but it is worth if you can get full cannons and full auto. You see, the cannons wobble but when it’s full auto, it’s awesome!
Animation: Wobble Shot +/- 5º
Color: Red
Available: Level 40
Ship 1E2
Description: Now I’m just messing with you. This ship wobbles +/-10º and that is very hard to contain. But full cannons and full auto, it’s like a cone of destruction.
Animation: Wobble Shot +/- 10º
Color: Black
Available: Level 90
Ship BP
Description: What’s this! We captured an enemy ship and converted it to be one of our own.
Animation: None
Color: Black
Available: Level 80
Say Good-bye to Cosmotic Coins
I really thought people would get a kick out of a coin that did nothing but support the game development. Boy was I wrong, no one bought one. Oh well. So now it’s replaced with a simple “Donate” button. Hopefully it’s less scary and doesn’t trigger peoples natural aversion to coins in free games.
New Settings!
OK ok ok … you can now enable in-ship perspective. Warning, a lot more intense vr experience. You’ve been warned. Default is off, I have it on because it’s fun.
Also, now you can enable snap rotate 90º in the game, not just in the pause menu. I don’t like it because you can twirl and hit asteroids but I’m not you. You be you and now that’s even easier with this setting.
Other Stuff
Announce rarity
Target laser hits enemies
Other minor bugs and fixes
… thanks for reading this far, if you play my game, and you have a better name for each of these, contact me and I’ll update it and give you a shout-out. : Discord
Just an update about the new build published today, Jan. 31, 2020.
What’s new in 1.0.10?
New Tutorial – Pause Menu
Movement improvement to Tutorial
Gravity Well
Edit name tip
Purchase in Pause functionality
Bug fixes and more ninja training, of course.
New Tutorial – Pause Menu
User “Martin[…]” informed me he didn’t even know about the pause menu while playing the game. Why is that an issue? The pause menu is where you can exit the game early or get information about your progress unlocking items or changing some of the settings.
I added a section in the Tutorial so players know to press B in game to bring up the pause menu. Also, by taking off your HMD it’ll bring up the pause menu too.
Movement improvement to Tutorial
How about a bit of help learning the movement with these guides. Tell me if that helps with your piloting.
Gravity Well
This one is just a name change. It was called Gravity Center but not only did “Kbomb[…]” recommend changing it to Gravity Well, but then I saw the new Star Wars and it was mentioned like a 1,000 times. So yeah, Gravity Well it is.
Edit name tip
Did you know you could change the name of a profile in this game. Most didn’t, soooo if you have default name, “PROFILE 1” then a little tip helper will give you the heads up you can hit the EDIT button and make it personal. Personally, I’m partial to public participation please … tell me what you think.
Purchase in Pause functionality
What!?! You didn’t know I was doing this for money. I am, but not a lot, I promise. This is your fun money. Well now I can take your fun money in the pause menu. Just another reason to point out the pause menu, I guess.
Bug fixes and more ninja training, of course.
I wish I didn’t have bugs, but if I didn’t have bugs then I wouldn’t be as good finding them. Thus the ninja training. Makes sense? No. Well just be glad there are less bugs.
As I put the finishing touches on my AI script for the two enemies in our new title, Cosmotic Blast, I wanted to out line some of what went into the design.
Enemies Movement
Enemies had to head towards you, close the gap but also not run into you. So I used this equation to find a point / vector in space to set as a target.
Saying that equation in english: Take the targets position and subtract enemies position to get a vector from enemy to target. Now add back a vector from the target to the enemy but only at a given distance. See how that makes a point in space at distance from the target. If you’re to close, it could be behind you.
To avoid targets, I found all near by objects with a OverlapShereNonAlloc() with a given distance. Then applied a opposing force to the enemy. So in a loop …
force += (transform.position - nearByObjects[i].transform.position).normalized * speed;
The speed is a variable since some enemies art faster at avoiding things than others. This also makes it avoid other enemies so they fly around with a nice spacing.
I can also reverse this force for Upgrade objects so the enemy takes them for their self. Muhahah!
Enemies Shoot!
First things first, you got to aim at your target:
Why Lerp? Lerp makes it so it slowly rotates towards a target at a given speed. The speed is based on what level the enemy is at.
Next, got to shoot. Well this is more complex, because it depends on what the enemy is shooting but to start it off, I do a Physics.Raycast and find if the “Player” is in front of the enemies canon … then I fire().
if (physics.Raycast (transform.position, canon.gameObject.transform.forward, out hit, range, rayMask)) {
if (hit.transform.tar == "") {
Fire();
}
}
The rayMask hides the Raycast from different gameObjects.
All the rest
All the rest is inherited from the classes that the ship uses, like upgrades and shield, etc.
Today we are announcing our new title, Cosmotic Blast. Think destroying asteroids, collecting upgrades and defeating enemies! It’s going to be a BLAST!