Apple Assault 1.5 : tops & flops

Hey there! Still reading ? great.
Deadlines at work somehow kept me away from my blog these last days, but I've got the time to play myself a little more with my 1.5 release, and I'm not so satisfied I actually released it anymore. If I was doing flash games rather than homebrew on a disintegrating scene, it might have cost me my fans and reputation.

• Berry bat is effective. It forces the player to focus with an acceptable level of frustration.
• Un-clumping makes level 3 less interesting, with most Applemen coming to you even if you don't explore what the level looks like (at least at very high incoming rates)
• With over 60 applemen on screen, there is a number of situation where un-clumping no longer work. Applemen remain stuck in a short place where they constantly collide against each other, and don't seem to "walk" anymore. This in turn slows down the game severely due to the abnormally high amount of events that are generated.
• I failed to solve the cluttering applemen problem. Especially, it remains hard to identify walking applemen that still manoeuvre through a bunch of stunned applemen.

I may return to it later on, for the sake of figuring out what makes the gameplay correct... but right now, the priority will be shifted (back) to make compound anims work and bring the school zone to life. If you've tried A.A-1.5 so far, feel free to fill the poll.

Semaines de dingue au boulot ... et donc pas trop la possibilité d'approcher mon blog à moins de 2 Mbit. Ça m'a par contre donné l'occasion de prendre du recul sur Apple Assault 1.5 ... si la chauve-souris-baie est plutôt réussie, la tentative d'éviter que les pommes ne s'agglutinent sur le haut de l'écran, en revanche, fait plutôt un four. Tout d'abord, les pommes viennent à toi, même si tu ne viens pas aux pommes -- en tout cas dans les niveaux 1 et 3. Ensuite, à partir d'une certaines densité de pommes (au 2eme passage en mode hard, notamment), les pommes commencent à se bloquer l'une-l'autre, à s'agglutiner encore plus sans même plus prendre la peine de se ballader à la recherche de Bilou. Le nombre de collisions pommes-pommes monte en flèche alors qu'il était supposé rester rare parce que provoquant O(N²) tests.