“Run! Go! Get to the chopper!” With these words, Arnie fans the world over greet each other. Well, now you can scream it to each other while playing Tango Fiesta, cos we’ve got one hell of a Choppa for you in this week’s update!
Arnie getting impatient for the chopper.
So who is the Chopper and what does it do? Basically, it’s a new objective type - alongside the Hut Destruction and the Antenna Hack - and is part of the pool of objectives that each level chooses to populate the challenge from. The Chopper, however, is new and different from the others for several reasons.
First up it defends itself with a side-mounted cannon - very tasty - which can quickly rip through your health if you’re not careful. Not only that, but it won’t just sit and take a pounding from your guns, because the pilot frequently decides enough is enough and moves to a new safer location after sustained attack. Finally, it also deposits enemy troops underneath it to further thwart your attempts to destroy it.
All in all it’s quite the handful! Sadly, it’s currently switched off for online play - it’s kinda working but not how we want it to (in other words it doesn’t exactly match the offline play) so we’re holding off on that till we can fix it - which should be very soon!
Our Choppa!
A lot of time has also been spent behind the scenes making sure the story tech we’re using is up to scratch. You can see a glimpse at it below, but obviously until it’s all perfect - until the story’s all implemented and the character portraits are all done - we don’t want to show it off very much. It’d be a major spoiler, and it’s not exactly something as iterative as, say, the feel of one of the guns! In fact we’re probably going to wait until we hit the big V1.0 to switch it back on for you to enjoy. But rest assured it’s coming… and it is a blast.
He’s chatty, our hero!
But that’s not all! We’ve finally addressed a big complaint with the game. At the end of every level in previous versions you’d have to go on a Perp Hunt (geddit?) across the whole map to find one miserable soldier hiding away and shivering in the corner. Well no longer! Now at the end of each level, once you’ve beaten all the objectives, one of two things can happen. First up, that could be it - ‘Mission Complete’ as soon as the final objective is dealt with! But secondly, there might be an ambush! It’s fairly obvious when it happens so keep an eye out - and just try to shoot all the bad guys before they shoot you! We really hope you enjoy this fairly small change, it’s something that’s bugged us since day one and finally knocking it on the head means a lot to us. Each level should go out with a bang rather than a whimper now.
As for today’s episode of our regular dev diary video series, which this week is a bit of a bumper because it’s two weeks’ worth of content, including a trip to Gamecity in Nottingham… well that’s right here: http://youtu.be/X6zeJYhywzA
And here is the (admittedly not quite complete) text version of all our efforts over the past fortnight:
ADDED
- New Objective, The chopper, available in offline play
Replaces the hut or the tower when spawned
Roams the map
Defends itself
Spawns baddies
- New animation system for props added
- Added framework and implementation for story system
- Added new SFX for the chopper
FIXED
- Rare issue with bullets that damage bosses, fixed.
UPDATED
- Numerous SFX updates and tweaks
- Numerous enemy behaviours updated
- Updated shotgun SFX
Next week we’ll be working on the introduction of our final World, one which has been overdue for a long time. One of our more… mechanical main characters will feel right at home there!
We’re also aiming to get more polish and some much more structured play into the game, systems that should allow us to make the game progress in a much more satisfying way and will make every level feel that little bit more magical. Of course we’re on a fortnightly update schedule so the week after that the drop should be … chunky to say the least! Watch this space (or twitter)!
For now, ruuuun! Goooo! Get to the chopper!