Blood Ship: Day 32

I'm 99.9% settled on an art style now. I'm 49.9% sure I can pull it off. I still haven't finalized a workflow from sketch to game. I'm bouncing between a lot of animation programs again, trying to find the one which suits my style the most. This is more frustrating than it sounds.

Two problems this week: sometimes the wave generator doesn't shut off when the boss appears and, even rarer, the player's projectiles impact on something which doesn't seem to exist. I'm still in "ignore it and hope it fixes itself" denial, but that's kind of like just driving a car until the check engine light burns out.

I've been studying a lot of other shoot-'em-ups and paying attention to the little details which contribute to the way the game feels. I want to nail the feeling of what I've got before adding any more new stuff. I want to get the artwork a helluva lot closer to the goalpost, too (as you can see above, it ain't even close). The problem is I have the best ideas for new stuff when I make it a point not to add new stuff.

Here's my end-of-month budget report:

$18.99 Gamemaker (purchased during last year's Humble Bundle sale)
$14.99 Aseprite (already owned it, but haven't used it in earnest until now)
$0.99 A bullet-hell script (which may not make it to the final version)
$69.00 Spine (also may not make it to the final version)
$5.00 Some generic laser sounds (almost definitely won't make it to the final version)

$108.97. Not bad, I'd say.