Rethinking Spawn Points

In the in-progress 0.2.0 build of Skeeter’s Grid, I’m refactoring enemy spawn points.

In the current version, any active space can be a spawn point, and the level manager employs a somewhat complicated algorithm to determine where the enemy should spawn based on level size, available space types, and player location. It works pretty well, but it was also made for an earlier game concept where Skeet had no real means of fighting back against enemies except evasion.

This is no longer the case.

Once Skeet acquires the correct core and gets access to Security Probes (an offensive option) for eliminating mobile and static enemies (resulting in a power-up rewards), I realized the entire dynamic of the game shifts, and if played right, Skeet could harvest power-ups from enemies as a means of getting through some of the larger levels (and there are some extremely large puzzles in the game).

But if the spawn points are semi-random, the player would have no idea how/where to position the security probes.

So despite the effort I first put into building the dynamic spawn point system, I decided to rip it out for a more static approach, which I imagine will be more satisfying to the player in the end. (I.e., It would be almost impossible to out-smart dynamic spawn points, but static points can be outsmarted.)

And really, ridding the game of some complexity will almost certainly make it easier to maintain in the long-term.