Circle Shot Stacking

Stacking powerups (using multiple powerups at the same time) should be much more devastating than only using one at a time. In most cases, the nature of the attack already makes stacking more deadly, such as doubling the amount of bombs or asteroids or splitting the field even further with lasers.

The exception is with the circle shot, when it is stacked the effect isn't nearly as effective as it should be. Each of the bullets has a predefined, constant angle that it will be launched from, so instead of having more bullets to avoid they end up overlapping each other and being only as effective as a single launch.

To fix this, each circle shot is tilted slightly a random amount to offset the bullets from each other, allowing the angles to change and preventing overlap with multiple attacks. The change can be seen in the screenshot comparison at the beginning of the post.

Another powerup this seems to be an issue with is the spikes, when multiple spikes are used the effect isn't evident; it is just as effective to use one than using four at the same time. My current plan is to make the spikes extend further with each additional attack, and if it works well in gameplay I'll keep it.