Have been a few "issues" since my last update. The first, and main issue, is that my MacBook Air charger said "good night" and I've been struggling to keep it charged. I did have this problem previously (the MBA is starting to get old, I'm afraid) so I have a few spare parts I bought on eBay half a year ago. Well, the charger that is f*cked was one of these spare parts, so I only have the I/O Board available.

I sort of realized I had to sort out the charging issue before I continued on Goldroids. So I dug in and replaced the I/O Board, to see if that was the problem. No. Actually, it made the problem worse as there was no connection for the camera wire on the "new" replacement I/O board and I never got any sound working. Anyway, still no charging, so it had to be the new charger I got that was broken. I found my old - "broken" - charger and it was working. Well, as good as in the old days, needs to sit in a specific position - helped by something pushing it a bit "up" in the socket - to work.

So my current charging solution is to charge up to 100% with the old charger, and keep it at 100% with the new, busted, one. The new one manage to power the laptop, just not charge it...

So, on to Goldroids...

Touch Control MADNESS

I've been a bit annoyed with the touch control on mobile phones. It, and your fingers, cover up too much of the game, so I'm looking into another solution. I think I'll go for a floating touch control. Haven't implemented it yet, but shouldn't be too hard. Basically, wherever you touch on the screen will be your zero movement point and when you move your finger around, the player will move according to your finger. While you're moving around you can either tap on the screen with another finger - or hold - to shoot/enter gold transfer mode. I reckon this way, as no touch controls will be visible, you'll get to see more of the game screen when you play the game.

This game is way to easy

I had my brother over for a visit today. I showed him the game and how I'm making it in Construct 2. When we played it, I complained that it is way to easy at the moment. In Paradroid, the enemy droids are hidden in other rooms until you enter the rooms. Also, in Paradroid, the playing area is much smaller, so the enemy droids spring up on you much more surprisingly. I kind of told myself (and my my brother) that it would be much better if the enemy droids in Goldroids would be hidden by default. And I kind of showed him what I meant by changing 2 events and adding a third... And just like that, the game is now much more playable. Enemy droids are now hidden, and disabled, by default and will only turn visible/enabled once you are within 75 pixel of the enemy, and it has Line of Sight to the player. I'm only making Level 1 at the moment, so the game is still kind of easy, but that's how its should be, really :) Later levels will be much harder - once the enemy droids starts firing (back) at you by default and you need several hits to destroy them.

More graphics

I made a Goldroids logo the other day. I was inspired by old C64 graphics and use of gradients in logos. I managed to make one hell of a logo in the end. Didn't take too long in Photoshop to be honest. Copy and paste is your friend :) So I made a temporary Start Screen to the game. I also made a new Sprite Font for the game. Upper/Lower Case and special characters. It's almost 1x2 format, as in 6 pixel wide and 12 pixel high. I've added actions in Construct 2 to manually adjust the width of narrower characters, like I, i, l, etc. Will also make some actions for extra wide characters like m, w, M, W later.

That's about everything done since last time. Nothing much, but some progress none the less...

Some examples of the new graphical elements...




The empty top area of the Start Screen is meant for Graphics, Instructions, Help, Settings, etc. Not implemented as of yet...

I will update the beta version of Goldroids to the latest version in a minute - link available at:

http://www.beedesign.no/goldroids-a-retro-paradroidish-clone