v0.3: Custom Ship Loadouts

Big stuff today. I finally got the Loadout functionality in a place where I can release it, even in its infancy. So sick.

NEW! Loadout Screen

The main menu's Play button now leads to the Loadout screen. This is where the player can pick their ship, their ability, and their weapon. The UI here is ... fine. It's something I will absolutely need to revisit, especially after I add more options for the three categories, but for now it's totally workable. It is not good and will be redone alongside the other assets, but it gets the point across.

Ships

There are three ships to choose from (the selection grid on the bottom just loops them):

1. Well-Rounded is the same ship you've been using. It has 75 HP, 400 movespeed, and fires 4 bullets per second that each deal 20 damage. You know the drill.
2. Tank has twice the HP, half the movespeed, half the fire rate, and twice the projectile damage.
3. Mosquito has 40 hp (little more than half), double the movespeed, double the fire rate, and half the projectile damage.

I don't think these are balanced particularly well. I think the Tank in particular struggles because its movespeed is too low to reliably collect pickups. Mosquito seems powerful but is really frail, so I guess that's promising.

Moving forward, additional ships will start the game with special abilities or other build incentives. Simple stat swaps are not interesting or particularly scalable -- the Tank and Mosquito are just baseline additions to get the system off the ground. I will likely give Mosquito and Tank baseline buffs, like starting out with lifesteal or regen, for example.

The next ship I implement will be the Engineer. The Engineer will start with one of each drone, and will acquire drones twice as fast, and the drones will be stronger -- but the ship will not have a weapon.

My goal is to add 20 playable ships.

Abilities

There are four abilities to choose from at this time. You pick one at the start of your run.

1. Dash is the same ability you have been using. It has a cooldown of 5 seconds and, when activated, doubles your ship's movement speed for 0.5 seconds.
2. Shield is a new ability that uses tech you've seen before. Its cooldown is 10 seconds. When activated, your ship receives a shield. This shield is identical to the ones you can pick up -- it absorbs one instance of damage and then goes away.
3. Burst is a new ability. Its cooldown is 10 seconds. When activated, your ship's rate of fire is doubled for 2 seconds.
4. Turbo is a new ability. Its cooldown is 10 seconds. When activated, your ship's projectile damage is doubled for 2 seconds.

Similar to the player ships, I am really not sure on balancing here. I think Shield has potential to be completely out of bounds, but its cooldown is pretty high and this is a game with a TON of damage sources on the screen at any given time. Burst and Turbo seem cool enough and have obvious build synergies with certain upgrades (e.g. lifesteal gets better as your rate of fire increases).

Some future ability ideas:

1. Activate to become invisible and phase through all objects
2. Activate to drop a bomb at your current position that explodes some time later
3. Activate to super-charge your drones
4. Activate to freeze nearby enemies

Weapons

At this time there is only one weapon to choose. The other three are not implemented and their buttons are disabled. I'll tell you about them, though.

1. Auto Cannon is the weapon you've been using. This is the button you can click.
2. Heat Ray is Matt's idea, it's going to be sick. It'll be a hitscan weapon (imagine a beam with infinite rate of fire and infinite projectile speed) with an associated Overheat meter. When you're shooting, the damage output will be very high, but you will also fill up your Overheat meter. If your meter builds over the top, your weapon will be disabled for some amount of time while it cools off.
3. Charge Shot will be a weapon that you charge and release. You click, and that begins building up your bullet. It'll grow larger and even damage enemies that it comes in contact with. When you release the button, you will shoot the projectile forward and it'll explode on contact.
4. Battering Ram is a melee weapon. You will click Fire and your ship will do a little dash forward -- anything you hit will take damage and you will not.

Some other ones coming down the pipe:

1. Sniper Rifle that has a low rate of fire, but very high damage, and the bullets pierce through everything in a straight line.
2. Sword as another melee option. Cleave enemies in front of you in a big arc and knock them back.

What's Next

For at least the next little while, my attention will be on adding more weapons, more abilities, and more ships. I think this system is fertile ground for adding a ton of replay value and fun, so I'll be focusing on that for a good chunk of time.

When I get significantly more options into the Loadout screen, I'll move over to some upgrade-focused backlog items that I've had kicking around for a while. Econ upgrades, like higher interest rate/cap, or boosting your shop's rarities.

I would love to add status effects, too. Poison for damage over time, electricity to make enemies stop firing, ice to slow and even freeze them.

Adding these upgrades should go hand-in-hand with additional ships that lean into them, too, and so the cycle will continue.

I will add a boss battle at waves 10 and 20. These rounds will not have timers -- you will need to defeat the boss.

Please someone give me a job.