It sounds like you pretty much have it! Hack up some random enemy and terrain spawners that hover a bit above the visible area and you'd have a generative shmup with no more work.
Throwaway thought: How much more work would it be to do this extension for arbitrary scroll directions? X or Y scrolling are traditional, with the occasional bit of 'x scrolling with places where the screen drifts up or down a bit' - but why not try diagonal scrolling? Or any arbitrary scroll direction, for that matter?
You could do a version of that Raizing race-shmup that actually had a curvy track, for instance. Put 'scroll direction' tags along the level layout and maybe put some smoothing on scroll direction changes...
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Date: 2008-10-02 07:28 pm (UTC)Throwaway thought: How much more work would it be to do this extension for arbitrary scroll directions? X or Y scrolling are traditional, with the occasional bit of 'x scrolling with places where the screen drifts up or down a bit' - but why not try diagonal scrolling? Or any arbitrary scroll direction, for that matter?
You could do a version of that Raizing race-shmup that actually had a curvy track, for instance. Put 'scroll direction' tags along the level layout and maybe put some smoothing on scroll direction changes...