Just finished uploading the files for the new version of the GODHOOD alpha! Even in the middle of a kickstarter, it's nice to know that I still have time to sit down and program for a little while. I've managed to get enough done too that I could practically make a whole devlog for it!
Alpha V0.02 (Vista/7/8.1/10)
Alpha V0.02 (XP)
First thing's first, I finally got around to implementing something that I've been wanting to implement for months (or at least a basic version of it)... Practice Mode!
Here, you can sit down, just listen to the music and play along with the rhythms without getting mercilessly assaulted! You also have the option to mute the music and only listen to the isolated rhythms which are programmatically generated.
You can even explode the Way!
I have a lot more features planned for this mode in the future, such as:
- Converting it to more of a training mode style thing where you can move around, spawn Ways, and enable/disable their AI
- For the isolated rhythms, allow the player to pick instruments to represent specific rhythms.
- Disable individual rhythms so you can get a feel of how for how they play out on their own.
For now, this makes for a nice alternative to getting completely slaughtered!
On that note, after a lot of feedback I've gotten from the alpha thread as well as some people I know offline, I've finally properly adjusted the difficulty. Let's go over those changes quick:
- You no longer start the level with 6 Ways immediately on the offense. Instead, Avadra decides that it'd be better to ease you into it, so instead, starting out, there will always be a minimum of one Way (usually works out as two though). Every 30 seconds, the minimum is incremented until after 180 seconds, there will be a minimum of SEVEN Ways active (even more than there were before)!
- The Ways now do significantly less damage. Previously, they actually did 80 damage where as Riff had 100 health. The reason for this imbalance is because Riff actually regens health every time he connects a hit, but only a small amount. Perhaps this was a little excessive to fight back from, so instead, I've adjusted the number down to 45, meaning Riff dies in three consecutive hits now instead of two!
- Speaking of Riff's regen, I've upped it so that it's a little more generous now. If you take a hit, a combo about two measures long should fully heal you!
Apart from that, I've added some quality of life features, such as the ability to fast forward through cutscenes (hold F)!
If I wanted to, it might have been fun to actually pitch up all the sounds that happen during fast forwarding but I thought that might be a little overkill.
I received feedback that it seems kind of silly that the only way to look up the game's controls is through the options menu so I decided that instead, the first time you play the game, time will slow down after the introductory explosion and show you this message:
There's a really cool fade in/fade out effect where the time and the music slow down and speed up with the fade and I tried to record a gif of it but the fade effect blew up the file size to ridiculous proportions so I decided a screenshot will do.
Apart from that, there's a whole bunch of boring stuff like the ability to go back to main menu as well as some bug fixes.
