I’m still trying to decide what sprites to make for the drones. I only have so many themed items to choose from, and sure, I could make multiple variations of one kind of sprite, but that feels both lazy and like it would be potentially confusing to players who mistake one sprite for another in the heat of the moment. Plus, I have to figure out what causes my screen tearing and fix that. My proverbial money is on some kind of screen refresh rate desync.
In the meantime, I finally fixed a minor issue that I’ve had for a long time: the enemy spawn-in timing. Because I’m creating both the particle effect and the enemy at the same time, the enemy would be visible before I want them to be, which basically ruins the summon animation. Furthermore, enemies immediately begin to move upon summon, walking out of the animation. If I had thought ahead about how I wanted my state machines to function, this would be an easy fix, and I suppose I could still implement that more elegant state machine, but for now, I went with something quick and easy. I set them to an unused state by default, meaning that the enemy isn’t actually doing anything—including taking damage—with a timer set to activate them at the right point within the summon animation. By making them invisible until this occurs, the summon animation now looks exactly as I wanted it to.
Well, except for the bomb guys. I made them faster so they move out of the animation a littler sooner. It’s nothing I can’t fix.
(Note: There should be a GIF here but I couldn't get the damn thing under Tumblr's 10MB restriction, which is especially annoying because it doesn't feel like it's a GIF that should be 20MB. The Patreon article has the GIF and is free)
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