Major revamp


After forcing my friends and collaborators to play this barely-game / thing / abomination, I came to several conclusions, and subsequently implemented some fixes : 

  • The enemies look like they are running away from the player. This is simply not the case, and stems from the very poor feedback the player gets regarding the heading and velocities of both itself and the enemies surrounding it -> Use directional sprites, which are rotated to be along the velocity vector, and added permanent, static markers, to better visualize movement.
  • The upgrade menu would pause the game in a jarring and unsatisfying manner -> New selection method, which is static and is done automatically on level up.
  • Useless UI, no level count indicator, progress bar was very hard to read and would spazz out sometimes -> Watched too much Knights of Sidonia, ended up loving the UI used in their battle sim, "recreated" it here.
  • Spawn system did not work very well, and had the player hunt down the blobs -> New targeted system that both spawns the blobs around the player, and tethers them to their spawn point, ensuring that the player is incentivized to move to intercept in a small area, instead of wandering for sustenance.

More issues persist, namely the following : 

  • No real objective to the game, and no real fail state. The player could be given a base energy level that, if lowered enough, would result in a game over.
  • AI is currently running at it's lowest complexity level, and lacks proper scaling and / or specific challenges. This will be further studied from playtesting.
  • Gameplay is very simplistic, and could be supplemented by adding equipment, that, at the cost of energy, and possibly levels, confers different boons depending on current upgrade path selection ( Speed boost for SPEED, a magnetic tractor beam for MAG, more defense for SIZE ).
  • No real sounds yet, and some of the visual feedback could be better as well. 
  • Camera does not scale in size with the player, and the static marker points are finite, so the player can "escape" the confines of the map.

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