We're excited to roll out a fresh set of updates that bring your Pulado games even closer to the arcade classics you love. From improved sprite handling to more authentic gameplay mechanics, these changes will make your custom creations feel more polished and dynamic.
Your Custom Graphics Look Better Than Ever
If you've been uploading your own art, you'll immediately notice a huge improvement! We've refined how custom picture avatars (PNG, WebP, GIF) are handled in-game. Now, your sprites will correctly pivot from their center, ensuring rotations, flips, and collisions behave exactly as you'd expect. No more unexpected wobbles or inaccurate hitboxes, especially with larger images. To get the best results, remember to draw your character or object pointing straight up in your image file – it will then appear perfectly in your game.
More Authentic Arcade Action
Several core gameplay elements have been updated to feel even more like the arcade originals:
- Dynamic Death Sequences: When your player loses a life, the game now handles it with classic arcade flair. Your player character will disappear, and a death explosion will play while enemies and their shots continue to move for a brief moment before the level restarts. This makes game over moments feel much more impactful and less jarring.
- Expanded Grid-Based Battles: For games inspired by classics like Space Invaders, you can now have more enemies on screen! The starting enemy count for static-grid games is no longer limited to three rows. If your game description calls for it, the grid will now fill as many rows as possible in the top half of the spawn area, leading to more intense starting waves.
- Classic Spawn Points: Player and power-up spawn locations now align perfectly with classic arcade conventions based on your chosen control type. Spin and free-moving characters will typically start mid-screen, while turret-style players will begin at the bottom edge, providing a more intuitive and authentic feel from the get-go.
Finer Control Over Your Creations
We've fine-tuned how certain player control types behave. Specifically, the "turn and drive" control scheme (often used for tanks or ships) now operates exactly as you'd expect from classic arcade games: your character will turn to face its heading and fire directly along that direction, giving you more precise and familiar control.
A Smoother Pulado Experience
We've also put a lot of work into making the overall Pulado experience more seamless and polished:
- Refined Loading and Menus: Game loading is now much smoother. Everything loads under a progress bar, and the Pulado splash screen appears over it, holding until your title screen is fully ready. This means no more elements popping in late – your title screen will appear complete and ready to go. Result screens also now show the logo immediately, without covering important buttons.
- Clearer Interface: We've applied the same subtle dark gradient background from the title screen to the level select, high scores, and customize screens. This small change significantly improves text readability and makes navigating these menus much easier.
- Consistent Avatar Sizing: Any picture sample avatars displayed on the title screen will now be drawn at their correct in-game size, providing a more consistent visual experience.
We can't wait to see what amazing, authentic arcade games you'll create with these new improvements! Dive in and try them out today.