Since my last journal entry, we've made a somewhat significant change in the combat gameplay. More specifically, if you read the previous entries where I describe the mechanics, you'll see that we used to have a shared "energy" resource which powered all available weapons. After some thought though, we decided to go for a more traditional approach: The main mechanic of the game remains the same : Participate in championships, earn points and money, and use them to buy new vehicles/items/weapons/upgrades. Before each race, you choose your loadout that consists of 4 weapons/items you can use for that particular session.

The difference is, each weapon now has an individual ammo counter, just like more shooter games, and some have an additional "cooldown" time, mainly to prevent the player from spamming things like missiles or speed boosts. Weapons have various effects on enemy vehicles, such as (obviously) reducing their health or slowing them down, and some "special" weapons can do things like disable the invincibility shield your opponent is currently using, or his whole weapon system for a short time.

The health bar itself, for each vehicle, is divided into several sections/cells. You start with 4, but as you progress you can upgrade them. The health regenerates slowly over time, but if you lose one whole cell, you can't regenerate beyond that point. It is a system that's been used in some shooting games I've played, like Mass Effect or Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay (note: amazing game!).

Anyway, we're currently working on a new track, an "Alien Colony" level, which contains a tunnel, and an open terrain section in which you have the ability, for the first time, to choose an alternative route, a feature that we'll continue to flesh out as we keep working on the game. Also some good news is that we've collaborated with a composer that will write the music tracks for each level, and also the menus, so that's one more thing scratched off our list. The following 2 gameplay videos showcase the aforementioned level, as we work on it, and the music track is one written by our composer. I hope you like them, and as always all comments are appreciated. I really could use feedback on what people like/don't like about any of the game's elements, from looks/graphics to gameplay(as much as you can infer from the video, obviously), music, level design, speed feel, anything.

So, until next time!