Phocas Island 2: Re-Phocased. Is it back?

[chopkinsca]

I haven't been working on this much. I bought oblivion, so I've been busy playing that. I do have an update though. Since I am dissatisfied with the final area of the island, I'm completely reworking it. I won't spoil it though.

[Scripten]

Couldn't wait for November, eh?

[chopkinsca]

Couldn't wait for November, eh?

Huh? What happens in November?

Edit: oh yeah, Skyrim. My computer can barely run oblivion.

[Drake Raider]

Mine can barely run Morrowind. Daggerfall, anyone?

[chopkinsca]

Thanks for bumping my thread with this information.

[Scripten]

FFFfffuuuuu-

I saw an update with chopkinsca's name on it, and come onto the topic thinking there might have been an update. Foiled again.

[chopkinsca]

For the first time in months I've worked on the project again. I've thought of a few new things I'd like to add. Some things will be simple, others, not so much.

-An achievement system. I may have already mentioned this, but I'm thinking about it more. Mostly in terms of what the achievements will be. Endurance mode and adventure mode will probably have their own set of achievements.

-Endurance mode. Right now it works, but could be a lot better. I still have to make a lot of decisions in this area. Areas such as how health should be handled. If the spawning rate of monsters needs to change. Maybe changing what spawns. Just to name a few things.

-Dead bodies. Normally in Phocas2, when you kill a monster, it's body fades. I've changed it so the body stays. I'll have an option to have the classic body fading out. The reason I did the fading out of bodies was so it would run faster. In Phocas2 I was worried about people not being able to run it, so I set my standards low. Now I'll be adding effects that as long as they run on my own computer, they are good. I may also add an effect of bodies decaying instead of fading away. Maybe add flies after a while, like in quake 2.

-Depending on what I come up with, I might add one or two new weapons. One would be a grenade style weapon. Not sure about the second one. Of course I'd have to figure out how to integrate the weapons into Phocas2.

-I may add a secondary fire to the 2 bullet firing weapons. It would probably be a melee attack, if anything.

-A boss rush mode. This would put you against all the bosses with no break in between. Right now this is only an idea and in no way is implemented. Chances of it being put in is about 50/50.

-I've decided to try and make my own particle fire instead of using the Hexen fire sprites. After an hour, this is what I came up with:

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[Drake Raider]

Good work on that! I'm looking forward to getting a machine that can run Phocas Island 2 without the rephocasing, but I hope to play it sometime!

[chopkinsca]

I just finished another playthrough. I played on skill 1 (the lowest) with leveling weapons. It played quite well. The leveled weapons add a new twist to the gameplay. It's more difficult starting out as the weapons are quite weak at first. But once you level them, they are very powerful. This run took about an hour and I had 70% of the island completed. I didn't do the optional map as it isn't finished yet.

I think I finally found out what was wrong with my leveling weapons screwing up. So that's one of the few major bugs left to fix. Now it's down to a bunch of small things left to do.

[chopkinsca]

I've switched my focus from adventure mode to endurance mode. What is endurance mode? Let me tell you:

Endurance mode, as you can expect from the name is an endurance. It focuses purely on combat, no puzzle solving crap. You get to choose from one of the 7 maps to play on. You'll spawn in a semi-random spot and most side areas are blocked off. You will be given all weapons (yep, all of the 3 of them). Monsters will spawn and it's your job to kill them without getting killed. The more you kill, the faster they'll spawn. The only end is death where you can try and get a high score.

Fully testing this will take some time. My first initial test includes playing the map with leveling weapons and maxing their level. So far, the first 3 levels I've tested came to around 39 minutes to reach this point. Further testing will just be playing until I die. The spawn scripts are easily changed. I can change how many monsters spawn, and the spawn delay easily with a script or based on kill count milestones. Once I get endurance mode at least working on each map, I'll give it to a couple of testers for further testing. After that, I'll get a few people to play it and set high scores (their name will appear next to the score).

[Drake Raider]

If only Phocas was compatable with multiplayer...

[chopkinsca]

Squashed a few bugs and added a dynamic high score display (thanks to Demolisher for the sorting code). As you are playing endurance mode, a real-time list of your score compared to the high scores will be displayed.

[chopkinsca]

Endurance mode testing is going great. I must say, it's quite fun. With 7 different maps to play on, and due to the random nature of the monster spawning, each play is different. You start out with lots of health, but it gets tense when you get low on health and are about to beat the highest score.

Once I get all the levels tested (mostly 2 levels left) I'll give it to three testers who will set their own high scores. After this, I was thinking about releasing a stripped down version of Phocas2.5 which only features endurance mode. I could have this release ready in about a week, depending on how fast the testers work and I get some bugs fixed.

[chopkinsca]

I've added a zoom altfire to the rifle. The size of the view hole and zoom factor change based on what level your rifle is. If I think of alt-fires for the axe and log-gun, I'll add them too.

An image to show how rifle level affects scope view hole size and zoom factor:

[Captain Ventris]

Nice. Great to see continued progress on this.