GameDev

Sound effects are now batched, so the chances of sound effects' cutting each other off is reduced. Duplicate sound effects are also removed before playback.

There are also new areas that are being worked on; they're not shown in the video.

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A demonstration of the final addition to the Wandering Blade's arsenal: an electric yellow orb.

On its own, it can paralyze foes, rendering them unable to move for a while. It can also detonate explosives on contact, though the resulting explosions will be more powerful than usual.

With a certain upgrade, the orb can even be charged into an explosive weapon, with up to four smaller sparks' indicating the orb's explosive power. In this charged state, it can be set off by another orb.

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The Wandering Blade gained a new weapon in the form of…a fiery dash? That's right, the newest weapon in its arsenal is a fiery dash! It's mapped to the PC Engine Mini controller, too! (Press Ⅱ while holding Ⅰ in PCE Mode.)

There's also this Wandering Blade-looking enemy that seems to use…large versions of the real deal's weapons? It doesn't seem to do much of anything at the moment, though.

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5-player co-op in action.

Players 2 through 4 are using TG-16/PCE Mini gamepads, which is why firing the homing missiles and deploying the barrier simultaneously is not possible for them. Players 1 and 5, on the hand, are using an XBOX 360 and PS4 controller respectively, so they have dedicated buttons for the missiles and shield.

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The Wandering Blade’s graphics have been overhauled to allow for smoother rotation. Some elements are a bit jittery, though…

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The project now has a timekeeping system. Just about the only thing that's inaccurate to my knowledge concerns the date ranges for the starsigns, which are fixed.

It's also possible to calculate ages by inputting a birthday, with three degrees of precision from month/day to month/day/hour/minute/second.

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More textures have been overhauled to use their real colors; the pause tint is back, and the text layers are now used for messages; a bare-bones HUD is now present, and can slide in from one of four directions, shifting the playfield with it; the freeze visual effect has been redone, using pre-existing grayscale conversions; the rock hazard is now single-script and functional; and there is a local leaderboard with 15 entries.

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ΣΑ-1912's behavior is now dependent on the game difficulty, with its becoming more aggressive at higher levels

The blue-bladed jet (the "Wandering Blade" from now on)'s green barrier can now deflect projectiles wherever possible, and its roll now uses the jet's horizontal velocity, making it not tilt as much when its health is low.

Sound playback was made more flexible; its audio system overall was redone to resemble a combined sound board, though SFX don't reflect that change yet.

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ΣΑ-1912 now has dynamic shadows and a whole array of gems to fire.

ΣΑ-1912 only has three different gems that it will fire at the player: a dark gray one (meant to be explosive), a yellow one (rather a stream of which, with each’s traveling at higher speeds), and a purple one (five fired in a spread formation). Needless to say, the yellow gem is probably the most dangerous attack, as it’s practically a deadly plasma beam.

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This project now uses a dither shader; the dithering was previously done per-texture, and that would’ve been bad for storage and memory.

I had added new textures, specifically those for a new enemy, the HUD, a generic background, potential touch controls, the ship select menu, more enemy weapons, and star particles.

ΣΑ-1912 (the first boss) also had its legacy code removed, because its timer lights wouldn’t have their textures set when the legacy textures were loaded.