Updated Weapon Sockets

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AXjbSZAU5I

Demonstration of all sockets thus far, now in HD!

Tonight I updated the ice gun socket, so it now has three levels of magnitude.  Ice +1 will freeze an enemy for 2 seconds, Ice +2 will freeze an enemy for 4 seconds, and Ice +3 will freeze an enemy for 6 seconds.  I’m thinking about expanding the types of Ice sockets.  I could have a Chill socket that just slows the enemy.  Also, I could have a separate Freeze socket which will allow the player to stand on the enemy without being damaged.

The fire gun socket is a new ability I added tonight.  The idea behind the fire gun is to apply burn damage over a period of time.  In order to do this, I had to scrap the two gun system of shooting ones and zeros.  That’s because the burn damage needs to just be a fraction of the actual weapon damage.  The damage over time concept does not work with the one and zero gun concept.  Overall, I felt that most players wouldn’t understand the binary blasting mechanic, and it was going to be problematic to correlate the binary sequence to decimal numbers in the game.  I may end up making the binary blasting concept a bonus mini-game.

The Fire +1 socket will burn the enemy for 5 damage each second for 3 seconds.  The Fire +2 socket does the same except for 6 total seconds, and Fire +3 will last for 9 seconds.  Currently, if an enemy is burning then it is just shaded red.

I also added Long +1, Long +2, and Long +3 sockets which increase the shot distance.  To implement this, I had to add a variable that keeps track of the distance modifier to the projectile Pellet class.  The base lifetime for a pellet is 20 frames, and for each increase in Long magnitude, 5 frames are added to the base lifetime value.  After I get multi-sockets working, I plan on allowing the Long socket to work with the Ice and Fire sockets.  However, I don’t know if I will allow Ice and Fire to be active at the same time.