Code Avarice

Eris Alpha Preview 10 - Intruder Alert!

by Mike

This week we worked on a tower alert system.

Motion detectors are used to set off the alert system. When in a state of alert, all the lights in the tower turn off, and are replaced with spinning red alert lights. There’s also a loud alarms siren that plays. Most importantly, all defenses get double damage.

Eris Alpha Preview 9 - Cooked To Perfection!

by Mike

For the past few weeks we focused on making invasions more interesting. This week we shifted our focus to making defending more interesting with some new defenses.

A cooker to burn your enemies to a crisp, and a barricade to prevent them from getting in to begin with!

We’ve got a lot more defenses and a new enemy planned for the coming weeks!

Eris Alpha Preview 8 - Gobble Gobble!

by Mike

This week, we continued our crusade to make invasions a little more interesting and dynamic. This time adding a hovering security drone for placing defenses, and a keypad for unlocking locked doors.

The security drone makes getting attacked much more interesting, because you can no longer just drop down a giant turret in the heat of battle. You are forced to choose between standing your ground and fighting the aliens off yourself, or running to the security room to buff your defenses.

Eris Alpha Preview 7 - Terminal Velocity

by Mike

This week, Travis finally replaced the old command terminal with a nice new one. It’s still not done but its better than just having a big white box where the terminal is supposed to be!

We also began implementing our new special rooms, to make invading towers a bit more interesting.

The first special room is a key room, where players can access a special key code that unlocks every door in the tower.

The second special room is a security room. From here you can access and shut down turrets, and view security cameras monitoring the tower.

These features aren’t quite done, most of the week was spent doing some much needed optimization, and planning exactly how we want these features to work. By next week we’ll have them fully working, and add a new hacking mini game to add some more interactivity to the act of capturing a tower.

Eris Alpha Preview 6 - Pounding and Drilling

by Mike

It’s great to be back at work, I never knew how much I would miss it until Hurricane Sandy took out my power for a week.

This week we implemented the giant drills that power the main alien tower. I’ve always been fascinated by sound design, so I had a lot of fun making the sounds for the drill. It’s far and away the biggest sound design challenge I’ve taken on thus far, and it came out pretty well. Travis still has some texture work to do on it, but it’s shaping up quite nicely!

Travis also made a bunch of new modular pieces including brand new doors!

I also implemented a new spawn culling algorithm, which should help prevent enemies being spawned when they are not needed.

Eris Alpha Preview 5 - Who Turned Off The Lights?

by Mike

I was hit pretty hard by hurricane sandy, so I couldn’t work this week. I just got power and internet back and Travis suggested we make a video anyway, even though we didn’t make any progress. Just so we can keep our “never missed a week” streak going.

Eris Alpha Preview 4 - Now You’re Thinking With Portals

by Mike

Just one feature this week, but it’s an awesome one! Portals!

Deployable portals that unfold and allow you to quickly get from one point on the map to another. Portals are not limited to players, you can send objects, vehicles, and even enemies through the portals as well!

Travis has really outdone himself with the unfolding animation, it looks damn good. It’s quite satisfying to toss down a cube, see it flop around and eventually unfold into a doorway to the other side of the map.

Eris Alpha Preview 3 - Checkerboard is SO Last Week…

by Mike

This week, we finally got rid of the terrible checkerboard tower assets. The new assets still need some work, but it’s a vast improvement over last week.

We also implemented a jump pad for rapidly ascending floors. Travis has mentioned that he wants to redesign it, so it will likely look completely different in a week or two.

The last big feature this week is turret upgrades. I’ve made the flamethrower and rocket launcher separate upgrades that cost XP. We’ve got plans for more turret upgrades in the future as well.

I also had to modify the controls a bit to make the spells I implemented last week a little easier to use. 

Eris Alpha Preview 2 - Magic Fingers Edition

by Mike

We spent the whole week working on adding elemental attacks to Eris.

They’re basically spells, but I don’t want to call them spells since they’re based on the user’s power armor, so they’re not technically magic.

We’ve got 3 elemental attacks in thus far. Flames, ice storm, and lightning.

Travis ran into some trouble with animation so the hands are pretty badly deformed when in their default position, he should have that fixed soon.

Eris Alpha Preview 1 - Now With 100% More Alpha!

by Mike

I’ve upped Eris from Pre-Alpha to Alpha. This is probably well overdue, but it’s done now, so that’s all the matters.

This week I added a machine gun and rocket launcher to the plane, and worked on a new perk that recharges ammo.

I also added grenades, which really spice up the combat and help when clearing out packs of Gaangus.