Hello again! Hope y’all enjoyed the last demo I uploaded. Based on the feedback from my family and friends, it seems the gameplay is on the right track. To compile the feedback into two easy lists.
Pros:
- Movement and shooting are fun
- Game is fun in general
- Nice to have multiple weapons
- Weapon sprites look nice
- AI feels nice to shoot at while they move around you
Cons:
- When you are done moving, player tends to slide a bit
- Lack of graphical clarity when hit or when damaging enemies.
- No sound
- No reason to use other weapons except for forced variety. Pistol powerful enough.
- You can see a lot of the map before you enter a room.
- Can easily shoot into other rooms from a safe distance.
There were a few other issues that people found that I corrected before the public release that aren’t worth mentioning here; they were mostly bugs. Right now the only public way to submit bugs is by commenting on the file page. I’d prefer to keep this open for general feedback so I might want to set up an email or other messaging system players can reliably send their bugs to and I can sort through easily.
Moving forward, for this month I will be taking a break from gameplay and looking to standardize sprite sizes, tiling patterns, and character dimensions for backgrounds and character sizes. I’ve recently discovered I was importing sprites incorrectly (I wasn’t changing the PixelsPerUnit from the default 100 so my floor sprites were vertically tearing). To fix this I will need to go through each sprite and adjust how they’re placed in the game. So instead of just fixing the current demo levels and the like, I’m archiving the demo assets and creating new sprites at the proper PPU value. Hopefully I can move away from the collage of placeholders and start drafting sprites closer to the final look of the game.
Already I’ve managed to create some easily placed tile sets for floors and walls using the tile rule system. I am surprised this isn’t part of the standard 2D assets or available via the package manager. For those interested, you can access the official repo for it here.
Here is a screenshot of my walls and floor in action.
Folks coming from the main page may have noticed the new logo. I already had a rough draft for the story and characters with desert creatures as the characters and didn’t intend to keep the purple lizard placeholder, but I’ve grown fond of it and they get to be on the logo for now. Hopefully with the new logo, there will be more attention on the game and feedback.
As with the new logo, characters will be redone to replace the placeholder cat and lizard. Personally I like the size of the characters gameplay-wise so I’ve played around with sprite silhouettes around that size. See below. Placeholders shown for comparison.
As always the build is available here. And the most recent large demo is available in the files section.
Nice of you to drop by and I hope you enjoy the game!
I'll be back next month.
