April 25th update:
Hello everyone, here’s a bigger update on how DERELICTION is going.
Combat
Ok so I’ve been working on the combat. And it’s been a delicate balance. First it was too easy, added more enemies. Then there was frame rate issues, so I had to bring the number down and the guns felt weak. It’s been a whole thing. Bugs too fast, bugs too slow. Or they’re all too similar, or not “swarming” enough.
Now I feel it’s better, decent. Not final certainly, but, and I hear this a fair bit with my “small subtle changes” each build, that I need to focus on the actual game. So the combat is as of now, searching swarms, combat / noise attracts enemies, and half dangerous swarms of 3 different variants of enemies. Fast with light armor, slow with heavy armor, and a middle large number swarm.
I haven’t found the limits to the max numbers etc, but I figure if I can keep a solid 60fps (not recording) at all times on my computer (iMac 2019) then it will run smooth on most systems.
Optimization
Next huge charge was long overdue. The level generation was very bloated and took far longer than I felt it should. I’m kinda still learning all of this, and I only have a few years (4) of programming experience, so, a lot of the older stuff which was written a year or so back had some major issues such as looping through the world for each level stage, etc. As well, there was issues with the level rooms loading sooner than they were needed, and unloading far later too, if at all. So I found my frames slowly dropping the longer the game played. Oops.
Controls
So unity has this new way of using inputs. I had to learn that. And rewrite all the player controls. But, I managed to get controller support working.
Multiplayer also has been a core part of the gameplay. Even if it was planned to be added later. But that’s boring, so, I went and added local split screen multiplayer. The wife and I like it and it really has helped me push past the writing blocks of what to do and when to do it.
Overall
Overall it doesn’t feel right, which is in itself alright, always room for improvement. But all in all the game is feel feeling better. And there’s a lot of feel involved. I sometimes don’t know exactly how it should be. But I get that glimpse of where to follow and I go there next.
The mood is lacking, as the world feels too clean, and I’m sure a lot of that has to do with the placeholder art. But also I’m sure it’s too do with the grid build world. I want the world to make the player cough. It should smell bad. If that makes sense. Or get tetanus from looking at it. As the player falls into the decay, desperate to keep themselves together. So. It’s not there yet.
But I’ve mostly been fixing errors and implementing core gameplay stuff. So nothing artsy yet. Hopefully soon. Thank you everyone for reading, well wishes from my family to yours, and I hope to have something more to share soon!
