Ok as promised here are a few screenshots, I tried to get good ones but its so hard with all the different things going on. I just wanted to show some of the interesting weapons and enemies. Keep in mind alot of this stuff isnt from the final game, its still being made, and there are just a few random enemies on screen. And the bullet patterns are just little tests.

The laser and rocket enemies, the lasers can rotate, the rockets will home in on you untill close then ‘deactivate’. Here im using the ‘ray’ wingman and ‘classic’ primary weapon:

Shot 1 

This was my poor attempt at showing the bullet scraping effects, the bullets were moving fast so its quite hard lol, also there are 2 other special enemies. One explodes on death destroying things within range of the blast, the other causes your bullets to gravitate towards it when its active:

Shot 2

This is just the Rocket bomb, it isnt really being shown in full because most of the enemies are already dead, but in the actual game the rockets will always hit every enemy on screen, making it fun to watch when the screen is full of enemies:

Shot 3

The last one is the meteor attack, this looks better when its actually moving lol:

Shot 4

Ive made all the special enemies now, they still need a bit of extra work but Ive narrowed it down to 7. The 3 I removed were a teleporting enemy, it just wasnt very fun and kinda felt too random. An enemy that aims at the player, all enemies now have the ability to aim at the player so that enemy was pointless. The last was a panic enemy, this just speeds up and fires lots of bullets at low health. I thought it was also pointless and kinda hard to notice among the chaos.

I can start making maps soon, once Ive got an editor and smoothed out a few un-polished bits of the core of the game. Also I think Ive decided on a system for the bosses, but Ill keep it a secret for now. It should be extremly cool.

Frantic 2 is now deep into development so I thought Ide give a quick update and detail some features. Ill stick some screenshots up in the near future to show how its coming along.

The new weapons in Frantic 2 will include:

Primary:

Shuriken - Focused quick firing large projectiles, that travel through enemies on hit, so you can line your enemies up for more efficient shots.

Classic - A  classic spread weapon, similar to Frantic 1, only a little more damaging and well balanced.

Wave - Bullets that move in a wave motion, the wave becomes more focused when the weapon is upgraded.

Curving - Bullets that curve off to the sides as you move, pretty much a novelty weapon but quite powerful.

Flame thrower - A close range heavily damaging weapon. Looks cool too

The 5 primary weapons each have 3 statistics that can level up 10 times, these are bullet movment speed, rate of fire and ’spread’ which alters the weapon depending on its type, for example spread gives the shuriken bullets more ‘health’ before they are destroyed. The maximum level will be limited by the level of card for that specific weapon. So a level 1 card will only allow 6 upgrades (2,2,2) and at level 4 (8,8,8) = 24.

The Wingmen:

Rocket, Laser, Ray, Electric and Targeted. I wont go into details about these, but they are fun I promise. Each wingman will have 5 levels, each level will alter the weapons behavour so it dishes out more damage.

There are 5 ships balanced for Speed, Armour and Initial weapon, each ship also has its own unique ‘bomb’ attack. Including the beam from the first game, I couldnt remove it lol. The others include a massive rocket attack, an allied ‘boss’ ship, a meteor shower and a black hole.

The addrenaline bar is also different, it now has 2 ‘tiers’ its basically like 2 addrenaline bars stacked on top of one another, with 3 attacks each, so if you save up to 4 bars you can do the bomb attack followed by a sheild powerup right afterwards. The ‘bombs’ are very brief and pretty much just clear the screen and give you a quick break from dodging if things get hard. The other addrenaline attacks are a temporary sheild like the origional game, it just absorbs health. And slow motion, which I origioanlly took out of Frantic 1, but that was before I made the boss bullets curtains. Its fun to go from slow to fast motion during one of those lol.

Ive also added a ‘tension bar’ this goes down naturally over time, but doing stunts fills it up, once its full your mutiplier goes up by 1. You can scrape bullets, get close ranged kills and combos to increase the bar. This completly changes the scoring mechanics of the game, I think its alot more ‘focused’ now, not just a matter of using the money shield in combination with not getting hit, and just generally killing everything - killing a specific enemy early might actually decrease the scoring potential. Also there is a bit of punishment for using the bombs. The addrenaline rises pretty quickly, but once its full all addrenaline is converted into points.

There is 15 ‘other’ cards that just give random little bonuses and power ups. Im not 100% on what they will be yet, I have 15 planned but Ill probably replace a few as I think they might ruin the delicate scoring mechanics.

The enemies are alot more complex now, they can fire bullet patterns that are actually as impressive as the boss patterns. Also there will be 10 ‘unique’ enemies, I might scrap a couple of them if they arnt fun to blow up.

Im still undecided on how the bosses will work, I have tons of ideas, so far I think the best thing is to have a boss that you can tear apart pixel by pixel. Within limits obviously lol.

Argh this is ‘quick update’ is getting a bit long, Ill leave it there. Ill get some screenshots up once the enemies are in and I can give a proper preview.