I got to work trying to make the Oozinator (aka the Chocotsunami) work in a fun and interesting way... here was my initial attempt:
Obviously, first off, I don't have chocolate blob graphics, so I just used the big white snowball (what Snowguys throw) as a test, figuring it was big enough to cover the area well. The results are unimpressive. It is quite fun to spew out an ocean of blobs, but they really don't have any semblance of cohesiveness or liquidity (hmmm... that makes me realize I never made them attracted to each other, only repelled to keep the lake growing. I wonder how it would be if they were attracted as well). It just looks like golf balls scattering. I suppose some of that would be improved with the different graphics, but you still get things like the left edge of the picture here, where individual blobs have dashed off from the main shape. And of course the entire shape is full of holes in various places. It really just doesn't do the job.
Wow, I just tried some basic cohesiveness code (had blobs that are further away than they should be get pulled towards each other slightly), and now it's not a lake of chocolate at all... it's an evil chocolate amoeba. You throw down some and it makes a jiggly amoeba, then you throw some more, and the amoeba rushes over to engulf the new food. That might actually be a pretty cool weapon in its own right. It's quite amusing to watch. If I added that it follows you around, it could be really entertaining. Right now, you can drag it around by firing a little bit more. It's an enormous waste of bullets, though. It fires hundreds in a matter of seconds, and they linger for about 10 seconds each.
Tomorrow, I'm going to try a whole new approach not involving bullets at all, but rather an effect on the map, much like the darkness in Supreme. That gets a little more technical, but it solves the issue of how I used up the entire bullet supply in about 10 seconds of continuous firing with this weapon.
