After a short break I've started work on Cavern Fighter 2 again. I have just finished work on the explosion classes that will allow me to create some interesting effects. In the last game almost every explosion consisted of a single sprite cycling through 8 frames to simulate a fireball. This time I wanted more control to be able to change the explosion depending on what had been destroyed. To achieve this I have developed a set of classes that make up my "Explosion Manager". All I need to do is make a simple call into this class and pass in the ID of the explosion and the starting X and Y location. The manager then creates an explosion based on the ID. Each explosion will consist of multiple burning particles to create some spectacular effects. Each particle will follow a predefined path allowing them to create distinctive patterns. What I need to do now is to create a separate utility to enable me to design and test these patterns.

The next big job will be to combine the weapon classes and the explosion classes with the (not yet written) collision detection. Once this is done that will be the core of the game completed.