v0.2.1: Drone and Other Changes


I've been doing a ton of work refactoring code behind the scenes here, and none of that is reflected in this patch. But soon! When I wrote this game initially, the Player object was responsible for way too much. Movement, stats, but also firing projectiles and abilities. I have moved this around so that there's the Player, which is the ship and its stats, and that manages movement and aiming; a Weapon, which handles the projectiles and the actual shooting; and an Ability, which manages (for now) just Dashing.

This is the scaffolding for a character select. You'll be able to pick your ship, your weapon, and your ability all separately. Soon. I have some ideas for the different options; I am hoping to implement at least 5 ships, 3 weapons, and 3 abilities once I get the architecture in place. 10 ships, 5 weapons, and 5 abilities would go insane.

As for what is in this actual update:

  1. I have overhauled the font. I don't think I missed any labels, but if I did, let me know. I am sorry about the old one. I thought it was better than the default, and I suppose in some ways it was, but it was not a good font. It was not very legible and it looked truly bizarre at larger sizes. This one looks much, much cleaner.
  2. I have reduced the interest rate from 5% to 3%. When I play, I tend to get a lot of gold from killing things and so I am not that reliant on the interest, but I still think 5% was a touch too high. Ethan said that his default strategy was to buy no upgrades for the first several rounds and just stock up interest. I think the core issue to fix in this scenario is the game being too easy at the beginning, but at a minimum, let's bring down the interest. The cap remains 100 gold -- it just takes longer to get to that point.
  3. I have reduced the starting player health from 100 to 75. This is an experiment. I want the early game to be more difficult -- really I want the whole game to be more difficult -- and I acknowledge that cutting player health is not an elegant way to do this. But it is a fast way to do it. Don't expect this change to be permanent, but do expect the knowledge I get from this experiment to inform the game's balance going forward.
  4. The player now receives a free drone after rounds 4, 8, 12, and 16. The drones were too strong, but getting one every other round also made too many of them. It was too many from a balance perspective but also too many from a Amount Of Shit On The Screen perspective. I think this new setup is maybe a little light -- it's cool to get upgrades! getting fewer upgrades feels bad! -- but the player is certainly less flooded with sprites now. It also opens a little window for me to make the drones more individually impactful if they need a buff.

I am hopeful that I can get a basic Ship Selection screen -- even one with one available option for the ship, ability, and weapon -- released by the end of this week. Hopefully earlier! It depends on external factors, I have more job-search stuff going on in the next two days.

Files

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Jun 25, 2024