this week we worked on a bit of everything so its a bit hard to pin down.
Getting an artist
we’ve got an artist contracted on now who will be making some better looking stuff for the game. some have said that my 30second art is fallible and while i don’t believe that i do believe that a being able to tell the difference between a conveyor and a rotator might be good, gameplay wise.
they’re going to start with the really pressing stuff within the factory where most time is spent. say goodbye to the rotator i suspect
Room remake
until this week i’d been making buildings based off a room plan that was a 2x3 meter box, and that these repeated made up a building
i had a sudden thought about the way this was set up though; how do you make an armour piercing round when it’ll take 10 shots to get though a single room? also how are you supposed to see the amount of damage left on a room? even more effects?
so this week i switched out the big 2x3 rooms for 6x1m boxes arranged in a 2x3 and the improvements were immediate. not only does the player have a really clear idea of the damage done to a building but it feels cooler breaking shit now.
going ham on reinforced concrete with a derringer
Follow projectile screen
it would be nice to be able to easily see where a projectile lands without scrolling over or zooming out 5000m.
theres a real lack of visual qol in the game as i’ve been focusing on the main loop but i decided to add a follow cam that tracks the last fired projectile to its terminus. it’ll then zoom out a little to give impact context.
the future idea is that this will also let you see a close up of what your projectile is up to, which would include internal processes and steering in the case of missles.
firing a dud explosive and doing jack shit damage
More levels
theres a bit of a lack of ‘content’ within the game as theres only a few levels, so i’ve been putting some time this week into adding a few more. these fall into two main categories for now
puzzle levels
puzzle levels are levels that have a very specific solution, probably only 1 solution. usually these are made by coming up with a weird thing you can do inside the factory then making a level around it.
these are good for encouraging a particular solution method, ie if we want the player to figure out that you can do something a bit outside the box.
challenge levels
challenge levels are more open ended and probably the kind of thing i want to use most in future. these are usually easier, but require the player to find their own solution, the game simply presents the challenge.
the issue with these is that they can easily be impossible and test the aptitude of the dev or too easy which tests it in another way.
auto generation of levels
this is something i’d like one day but i dont want to take on the additional burden for now. theres more pressing matters.
Explosive magazines
in the drive to make more interesting levels, i’ve added a new feature: explosive enemy magazines. enemies keep their ammo somewhere and generally the magazine is where they do it.
these explode with a very powerful explosion when destroyed and make for an excellent weak spot within a larger enemy