Hi!

OMG. U actually took the time to subscribe? Thank you for that! :)

I'm releasing a new version of BongBong today, and although the visual presentation hasn't changed, a lot has been done to the engine to make its core healthy, maintainable, and feature-proof. Here are some of my notes.

Map editor

Currently, the only extremely unfriendly tool available to developers is the map editor, which now helps me (and my kids!) build different levels with varied layouts and item spawn locations. I imagine that in one of the next releases, this editor will be mature enough that I'll be able to fuse it with the regular gameplay, and you'll be able to invite your friends to a map you've made.

Tuning

One thing that is becoming extremely obvious is the number of "knobs" that the game has. From speed, traction, and damage to effects and different weapons. Everything needs to be "perfectly" balanced with the rest of the game. To make this task much easier, I've built tooling into the engine that exposes all these knobs to the UI, where they can be changed, and the game engine picks up changes in real time. This is already becoming an extremely useful tool!

One more thing!

There is now a new item the game supports: the shield. When a tank picks it up, anything that hits it will bounce away for a while, and its health is restored to 100%.

Other changes include

• Rewrite of tank spawning. There should be practically 0 tanks in walls
• Bricks, wood, and glass are all now significantly easier to destroy
• Tank handling should be improved via new bounding/hit boxes reimplementation
• Inventory updates
• New default map

Give it a try at bongbong.io, and thank you for your feedback and ideas!

Regards!

- Oto