My first build/demo

Today I have released the first build/demo of my project called "The crying man" and although it is a very very basic version of the final product it still manages to demonstrate most of the core mechanics of my game.

Story and objective
My game is about a virus called "The crying man" that is trying to infect a fictional characters PC. In response to the virus the computer has activated it's anti-virus software which for now we will use as "Kaperski" until I think of my own name. The player controls this anti-virus software which is represented by a soldier that can shoot and kill the virus and who can also retrieve files. The game offers a set amount of files up for grabs (right now it's set to 100 because enemy health + spawning is not fully implemented) and both the virus and player try to obtain as many files as possible, once they are all gone the player will be given a score (not fully implemented) of how they did. At the same time the viruses have special units to try and kill the player (health not implemented) and a full rundown of enemies is below. My main source of inspiration for my game comes from "Dude and Zombies" which you can play here to get a sense of the direction my game is going in.

Enemies

Basic virus:
I played a lot of tower defence games whilst researching my game and decided to stick with three very common types of enemies found in almost all of them. The first is the basic enemy, or the average one. This enemy usually has average health, speed and damage and normally spawns in large groups. In "The crying man" this is the first enemy that spawns and it spawns every 5 seconds from both sides. When the game is fully complete it will have all of the typical qualities above as well as the fastest growing spawn rate of all enemies. Note: This enemy will not do damage to players.

Offensive virus:
Although it's abilities are not yet implemented in the game, this virus will deal damage to the player and will not try and infect any files. The speed of this virus is notably quicker and it's aim is to take a lot of the bullet fire off of the other two viruses, as the game progresses they will become tougher and do more damage. Currently in the game their spawning rate is 10 seconds but I expect this to be more around 7-8 seconds once It's been fully play tested.

Tank Virus:
Almost all games have a virus which can take a lot of player damage and do a lot more damage, but consequently suffers with slower spawn rates and slower movement. In my game that is also true. The tank virus will have significantly more health than the other two opponents however it will suffer severely with spawning rates which right now is set to every 20 seconds. This virus will also not attack the player but can infect lots of files. In this first version of the game you can't really appreciate the level of difficulty these final two opponents offer and making sure this is balanced along with spawn rates is proving the most difficult part in creating my game.

The Player
The anti-virus software which the player controls is almost finished now. The player is able to shoot left and right using z and x, move side to side using left and right arrows and also jump using the up arrow. Generally it is difficult to make the player balanced at the moment as the enemies are not set up with health, the guns rate of fire is also already to large and once again will need to be play tested in order to get the right balance.

My challenges

Although creating this game so far has been fun, stencyl has also offered myself a lot of challenges.

Here are just a few of them:

-Enemies spawn at the left and right side of the screen in my game, implementing changes such as adding new enemies or changing the objectives position does not seem to affect the way enemies from the left behave, but almost certainly require me to reposition all the right side.
-I tried around 5 different shooting behaviours built into stencyl or from stencylforge all of which were broken. On the sixth attempt I made my own.
-Keeping scores and displaying them is proving to be difficult, many of the behaviours already existing will only keep one score and display it as Stencyl does not allow you to duplicate existing behaviours for one scene or entity.

What's left to do:
-Add an intro and finish off assets in order to improve the players understanding of the story.
-Add enemy and player health.
-Balance enemy spawning rates that change as the game progresses.
-Balance players rate of fire.