You know, this may be considered adding complexity to fix clarity, which in principle is dubious, but I'm realizing just how much tougher being 3D makes everything to get across. 2D shmups pretty much never need position and distance cues, it's already all there on the screen for you. Ideally in 3D you can read an entire space instantly, in practice it's really tough.
Yeah! That's really the central challenge I've been trying to tackle with both K and K2. I want that simplicity of a 2D game, but in a 3D world. Perhaps that's trying to square the circle, but I enjoy the process of trying to work it out.
Obviously, I am not winning this yet (and may never win), but there are a few places I think it's coming together - the crosshair, I feel, does its job very well. The spatial-sphere of game play is broken down from 3D to 2D, auto-correcting depth for you. That works.
Spatial awareness is something I've barely touched on with K2, but had a bit of success with in K - (multiple shadows helped you to understand clearly where your craft was relative to the ground, but K2 has no such relativity - it's currently spatially agnostic, as I mentioned before). The background sphere is too much of a blur (needs more landmarks) and orientation is anyway kind of irrelevant at the moment. Seems like even in space combat games, people are more comfortable with the game if a game-flow line/plane is defined by two/three major celestial bodies. It's interesting how we ultimately want to be able to break down 3D space into 2D components so that we can get our heads around it.
The enemy positions registering on the player shell is a start. You've got the star lines which make your direction and velocity pretty easy to read. One thing I'm remembering about TIE Fighter et al is that capital ships often served as landmarks... a big star destroyer 10 klicks away would become a reference point, you could reorient yourself by them more easily after a twisty dogfight. So maybe some big masses with distinct shapes further off in the background? Or something completely different that accomplishes the same purpose.
Hah, yes. I'm in complete agreement. As the game develops, I'd like to work toward large bodies in space, doing just that - setting the flow of the scene. Things like capitol ships, definitely, but also planet/planetoids looking more like K's landscapes. The enemies in the current prototype were supposed to combine together to create sort of... lego capital ships, like Warning Forever's system. Obviously, with the lack of optimization, i couldn't get too many on screen, and just didn't have the time to do more complex snap-on upgrades.
Aside from that, a lot of feel tuning and perfecting the feedback channels (you know, that nontrivial stuff that makes every game go from okay to great). I can drill into that more if you want, but it sounds like you have some ideas about where to take that already.
Thanks, yeah. I have a big list of various things which need better feedback. Interestingly, I'm not ignoring the feedback which has been put to me in a polite fashion.
In response to DanLomez... your post has had me feeling pretty down all night. The feedback itself is fair, and useful, but gains nothing from the tone in which it's given.
In addition, I'd like to point out that since games are my day job, I like to use my homebrew time to try things that are too risky or inappropriate for work hours. I like to experiment. Before someone leaps down my throat saying "innovation isn't everything", I should point out that I have no problem what so ever with people trying to make established tropes really cool, especially if the can re-invent them in interesting ways. I find it enjoyable to explore off the beaten track, and try new ideas (or new takes on old ideas), even if they're not guaranteed to work. I want to learn why they turn out the way they do, whether or not they are successful experiments. It's a personal choice of what I do in my spare time, and I'm not sure why I feel the need to justify it.
Trying anything vaguely new brings your face in immediate proximity with the hundred mile an hour, obvious-in-hindsight problems which you encounter far less if you're sticking to a pre-defined template. While it's not particularly hard to point out what went wrong, it's very hard (though not impossible) to foresee problems without trying them out first, hence prototyping. It's not like I'm in any way married to any errors of implementation I make - decisions will change, or be revoked entirely should a better solution not emerge out of the exploration. A verbal kick in the teeth makes me no more or less aware of the problems in the prototype.
And yes, the game probably IS better on paper than in practice. That'll be something to do with the limited time, experience, and man-power available to me. Ropey, unpolished, unfinished builds are sort of de rigeur when it comes to prototyping. I confess I've been more concerned with trying out these various experiments for my own personal curiosity than to living up to your subjective expectations. Perhaps you should ask for your money back?