And since iShoot is all about weapons, that’s what I’m going to talk about today. For the purposes of this discussion, I’m assuming at least passing familiarity with the weapon editor in iShoot 1. Naturally, there’s going to be a much more comprehensive weapon editor in iShoot 2, so this post is of the most interest to people who plan to build iShoot 2 weapons.

The original iShoot weapon system was very limited (hey, I wrote the whole game in six weeks, after all). You could take various basic types of weapons, such as “cluster bomb” or “shell”, and combine them in various ways — a cluster bomb of shells, or even a cluster bomb of cluster bombs of shells, if you so chose. And you could tweak the weapon’s settings, such as how many submunitions they created and how far they shot them. And that… was really about it.

In iShoot 2, the main goal of the weapon system is to make it more modular, so you can access smaller subunits of weapon behavior and alter or replace them. To illustrate the difference, we’ll start with a “Shell” from iShoot 1. iShoot 1 shells, such as the Mini Mortar, are weapons that fly in a ballistic arc and explode into a circular blast upon striking a solid object. You can tweak various settings, such as the color of the explosion or the sound it makes, but all of those behaviors are tied together into a single chunk and can’t be separated. You can’t create a shell that doesn’t travel ballistically, or one that drops bombs as it flies, or one that can travel through dirt but not tanks, or anything else not covered by the existing weapon effects.

Effects

iShoot 2 takes a completely different approach. First, the behavior when a weapon blows up is much more granular. Rather than the all-in-one “Shell”, the equivalent weapon in iShoot 2 actually has six different warhead effects:

1) Play Sound
2) Create Explosion Particles (configured to create a burst which looks like a fireball)
3) Destroy Terrain Circle
4) Apply Damage
5) Create Smoke
6) Create Debris

There are many, many different effects you can apply as part of a weapon exploding, they can all be freely combined, and there is no limit on the number of effects a weapon can have.

As another example, the “Cluster Bomb” from iShoot 1 is handled in iShoot 2 as a “Linear Weapon Burst” effect. You can now specify the angle of the line along which the submunitions will be shot, and since you can create as many effects as you like, you can easily create (say) a bomb which explodes into an X-shaped blast of shells simply by creating two linear bursts at right angles to each other.

Triggers

iShoot 2 introduces the concept of “triggers”, which cause effects to happen when certain conditions are met. The most basic trigger, and one which all weapons have by default, is “Struck solid object”. By default this trigger is wired up to the “Explode” effect, which simply runs all of the weapon’s warhead effects. You can delete this trigger, in which case the weapon will happily travel right through solid objects, and you can also wire it up to different effects (for instance, maybe you want a weapon which behaves differently when it bursts in midair vs. when it hits the ground).

Other triggers include “Struck Terrain”, “Struck Tank”, “Reached Apex”, “Proximity”, and “Delay”. Triggers can be armed and disarmed, so for instance you can have the “Reached Apex” trigger arm the “Struck Solid Object” trigger — your weapon will travel through solid ground until it reaches its peak and begins descending. If you have a delay trigger re-arm itself, it fires again after the appropriate delay. This allows you to have an effect which runs every <n> frames, such as dropping bombs.

Travel

All weapons in iShoot were ballistic, period. In iShoot 2, you will be able to disable the effects of wind and gravity on a weapon, control its speed and direction via effects, enable homing, and many other settings. Weapons can change appearance mid-flight, and there are even animated weapons now that reconfigure themselves on their way to the target. I’m not ready to spoil all the surprises here, but iShoot 2 is going to have some cool weapons.

Weapon Exchange

Where’s the fun in building all of these world-destroying weapons if you can’t share them? So naturally you will be able to share your custom weapons online. We are also planning on hosting a contest to design the best set of weapons, with a sizable cash prize. So go ahead and start thinking about weapons now

Obviously with only two weeks of work on it and a brand new engine to get up and running, there isn’t too much working yet. And what is working isn’t ready to be subjected to public scrutiny yet. Still, we’ve gotten a lot done in such a short period of time — we can aim and shoot various cool weapons, and the terrain is in and blowing apart beautifully. Maps are finally bigger than a single screen, and scrolling and pinch zooming across the expansive landscape are working perfectly.

Most exciting to me, though, is the graphical improvements we’re going to have this time around. Here’s a tank from the original iShoot:

In comparison, here is one of the new iShoot 2 tanks when fully zoomed in (ignore the ugly solid blue background, skies aren’t in yet):

Weapons, explosions, the UI, and everything else are all getting the same level of upgrade. On top of the obvious graphical improvements, the engine has some extremely cool tricks up its sleeve that I’m not ready to talk about yet. Stay tuned…

From the publisher of iShoot, the #1 iPhone game in January 2009, comes an iPhone port of the popular Rhumb Line board game from Games Above Board. Players take turns positioning stones on a circular board in an effort to complete arcs, radii, and spirals of 4 or more stones.

Rhumb line features two player competitive play, or three levels of computer difficulty for solo action, as well as a bright Caribbean soundscape and clean animation.

This game received a Major Fun Award in the “thinking” category in 2008.

Buy Rhumb Line at the App Store today!

iShoot has also been named by Apple as one of the Top 20 Paid Apps of All Time!  Don’t let it’s position at #19 fool you — the list is sorted by number of copies, not by revenue, and at three times the price of most apps on the list (iShoot was $2.99 for most of its life) it would rank much higher if the list were sorted by revenue.

iShoot is an artillery combat game in which tanks blast each other with a wide range of high-powered weapons, from basic shells and cluster bombs to the world-destroying Shiva Bomb.

The full version of iShoot includes 25 weapons, photorealistic landscapes, drivable tanks, and more money with which to buy weapons. Buy iShoot at the App Store today!

In addition to the infinite-ammo Mini Mortar, the full version of iShoot features the following weapons:

Video

The iShoot Rule Editor

A short game of iShoot

Screens