Feels Bad Man

Time Worked: 

2/15/24: 3 hrs

2/16/24: 2 hrs, 45 mins

2/17/24: 2 hrs, 15 mins

So I showed my game to a friend. And, unfortunately (but not surprisingly) it fucking sucked! The real problem is, I have implemented absolutely zero explanation of the controls, what you're supposed to do, etc. It's just the start screen, a menu (with no explanation), gameplay with no UI, and about fifteen different ways you can very easily break the game completely. 

There were so many obvious issues that needed to be taken care of such as the title screen not even having a screenshot from this game (it was the EndSoldier title screen), buttons for features I know I removed etc. It was a mess! It was so painful to watch. But there are many lessons here, I'd say the biggest is that I need to get back to playtesting with people. I did that with EndSoldier all the time, and I think that's why it turned out decent. I have now spent more time developing this game than I had with EndSoldier, and it's worse off. Because I haven't been playtesting.

So, I decided the next things I'll be focusing on is thinking from a player perspective. Adding in some explanations, give the player some direction, add essential UI, etc. I talked a while ago about how great a fast iterative process is, but I have been getting so caught up in improving the features of the mission gameplay that I am neglecting very basic things the game absolutely needs.

One interesting thing that I did however before I had him playtest, is develop a way to have fast-firing projectiles actually register hits. I was playing around with other top-down shooters just to get some inspiration, and I found The Ascent had some pretty nice top down shooter feel without slow moving bullets. I also noticed that it, as well as Enter The Gungeon, Boltgun, and several others all have the player projectiles move quite fast, while enemy projectiles are noticeably slower.  So, I decided to do that in my game - make the player projectiles very fast, and enemies moderately slow (but still not too dodgeable). 

I did some quick google research about how FPSs such as COD or Halo handle projectiles, and learned about Hit Scan. So, I just do a single instant raycast now for fast-moving projectiles to tell if it hits and do damage, and spawn a sprite that moves from origin to hit target (or 500m out or something for non-hitting projectiles) and deletes itself. The slower moving projectiles still use colliders however. This was pretty interesting and fun to develop, and I don't regret spending the time on it.

I also added in platforms that allow an actor to shoot over walls (and get shot at).

Anyway, today I just spent time replacing the title screen. I honestly hate the result here, but it can't be worse than showing a title screen for a game that isn't even this one. I'll iterate on it and come up with something better. It'll work for now.