10s generator is too slow -- 10 seconds ago is an eternity in a shmup
and a player who has stopped firing should recover much faster. The
generator's max capacity is much lower and shield cost has been
rebalanced to match.
The Protron is much more expensive to fire, it was previously just
easy mode.
Shields now recover faster _once they start recovering_ (every second
if energy is available) but getting hit causes a "penalty cooldown"
that is much longer than the standard recovery interval. This behavior
is taken from Halo and basically every modern FPS that came after it;
it's unlike Tyrian, which had consistent shield recovery behavior.
But I think Halo's rule plays much better.
a batch change from ship to self broke the thing that kept the player on
the screen. also spawn_goodie got missed in the migration to `_ENV` for
looking up stuff by name.
Vacuum Gambit is about to stop being a Tyrian clone. The hybrid of
Mega Man Battle Network and Slay the Spire mechanics lends itself better
to Galaga than Tyrian. updatedshmup.p8 remains an excellent basis for a
Tyrian-like shmup, especially since it has a (demo of a) level loading
engine that reads strings, and maybe I'll even implement something along
those lines someday -- but I'm about to tear it all down to build it up
again, starting with the entire model for levels and progress, followed
shortly by the "energy" system and its interaction with shields.
(long-term plan: shields will auto-recover after every "flotilla", but
health will be more difficult to recover. Player shots will be limited
entirely by ammo and cooldown, replacing the "burst throughput" vs.
"sustain throughput" system created by the generator, although some
enemy firing patterns may recreate that behavior.)
(plan for the "level" system: create Galaga-style flotillas. I think
ship behaviors can reasonably be declared in the 8 bits available in
sprite flags, meaning I can program simple enemies entirely from the
sprite sheet and draw flotillas on the map.)
