Food Fight 404 - Alpha Update

Hello fellow crust-slingers! It’s been a whirlwind of cutting code, juggling ADHD-driven rewrites, and squeezing out that sweet, sweet wave-shooter action. Here’s what’s fresh out of the oven since our last update:

🎯 Core Gameplay Overhaul

• Rewritten Game Flow The week before our alpha release, we realized the original loop didn’t quite capture that frantic wave-shooter vibe. After an ADHD-powered all-nighter, I tore out the old system and rebuilt it from scratch. Now you’ll experience:

  1. Spawning barriers that slide toward you at the same rate as the floor scroll (no sneaky camera movements).
  2. Frequence based wave patterns that mix obstacles, enemies, and bosses at pseudo-random intervals.
  3. Dynamic pacing, where the frequency of enemies increases with each completed level.

• Wave Pattern System Instead of “spawn N enemies, wait X seconds,” we now generate each wave of enemies with increasing numbers and shorter frequencies.

  Pair that with randomly selected spawn points and you get a feeling that enemies are coming from anywhere and everywhere all at once.

🤖 Enemy & Variant Framework

• One Base + Data All enemies share a single Enemy base. Each variant is driven by a EnemyData. At runtime, our VariantLoader generates enemies based on the provided, automatically:

  • Instantiates the correct visual model (cucumber, carrot, cabbage, etc.)
  • Applies material overrides
  • Configures stats: Health, Speed, RotationSpeed, and any attack parameters.
  • Wires up the Shooter components so each variant behaves appropriately.

• Behavioral AI Each enemy now:

  1. Idle Moves until a barrier clears.
  2. On barrier clear, switches into “attack” mode and when close enough, fires.
  3. We removed all per-enemy colliders for “line of sight” checks—now every enemy simply waits for the barrier’s static event (OnBarrierCleared) and then checks its distance to the player each frame. If within range, it begins attacking.

💥 Power-Ups & Companion Logic

• Permanent Weapon Upgrades Our Weapon Upgrades now grants a permanent weapon buff (lasting until you die). When picked up:

  • Player’s Shooter swaps to a new Weapon asset and updated FireCooldown.
  • All active companions inherit the same weapon, so those slice-drones stay on par with the player.

• Companion Manager Enhancements The CompanionManager does three key things:

  1. Spawns N companions in a circular formation around the player (e.g., 3 “slice buddies” that orbit at a fixed radius).
  2. Duplicates the player’s health into each companion’s own Health component, so everyone has equal durability.
  3. Fires an event (OnAllCompanionsDead) once all slice buddies are down—only then does the player’s “turn” (or wave) truly end. This means you can’t leave the battlefield until every companion is eliminated (or you run out of crust).

🏗 Wave Spawner & Obstacle Chaos

• Grammar vs. Simplicity We experimented with full “pattern grammar” (using tokens and parsed lists), but for alpha speed we decided to ditch it with a simpler frequency generator. Now, on each wave:

  1. We generate a set number of enemies based on player and level statistics.
  2. We activate the enemies in random locations at a frequency that increases as the levels increase. So gradually the enemies will overpower the player, eventually.
  3. Once all waves for that level are released, then a boss is released at the end.

• Obstacle Mix-Ins Each wave now spawns a random set of obstacle assets (rolling pins, spiked dough airators, kegs, or pizza boxes) according to a SpawnEntry weight.

  This gives you just enough chaos—cabbage snipers hiding behind crates, cucumber grenades bouncing off rolling dough—before the horde arrives.

🗓 What’s Next?

1. UI Polish

   • Revamp the end-of-wave panel
   • Improve the HUD.

2. Resource Economy

   • Implement virtual currancy to buy upgrades before the game starts and in-between levels.
   • Build a between-wave upgrade menu where you spend your cheese on “cheets”

3. Boss Waves & Balance

   • Fine-tune the boss token (B0, B1, etc.) to spawn unique minibosses every 5 waves.
   • Tweak EnemyWaveGenerator so higher-level waves adapt to player skill (e.g. fewer enemies if you’re dodging like a pro).

4. Alpha 2 Launch

   • After we have collected information on the first Alpha. We will fix critical bugs from our first alpha demo.
   • Look for an official Alpha 2 build drop in Discord #alpha-playtest in the coming week.

Thanks for reading—your feedback powers our pizza machines. 🍕 If you’re new here, join our Discord to get involved in testing, share your craziest screenshots, and help shape the final battle. Until next time: keep your crust crispy and your shots saucy!

– Guts Glory Games