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[TheLastBanana]

I've been working on porting my Ludum Dare 18 entry to Flash recently. This is how far I've gotten:

Currently I'm looking for feedback on how to indicate which way the player is facing. Any other comments are welcome too, of course. This is still a very early WIP, so don't expect much.
In case I upload a version without the text in it by accident, this controls are:

• Left and right arrow keys to rotate.
• Up to move forward, down to move backward.
• Space to fire.
• R to restart.

I've taken it down for now - I'm planning to get it sponsored - but thanks for the feedback!

Thanks!

[Captain_404]

The first thing I would do is actually rotate the character sprite instead of just the little light. This is small, but it will help the way the movement feels. Additionally, your player sprite is basically symmetrical from all sides, consider changing it to something more triangular that has a definite direction it's pointing.

I'd also make the player blue and the attachable ships grey (and of a noticeably different luminosity than the background). It would help too if the enemy ships broke apart a bit so that when you pick them up they are visibly smaller than you.


I quite like how this teaches the player all necessary skills though experience rather than text at the game's start.

[TheLastBanana]

Thanks for the feedback!
I had been using an entirely circular sprite with a rotating arrow on it until recently. The player didn't rotate because that way the shine was consistently coming from one direction. Somehow I didn't think to turn rotation back on for the player sprite when I changed it to the current one, even though it definitely looks better - especially with the light there, since it actually looks like it's shining off the player.

There's a few reasons that the player is symmetrical. First of all, since enemies revolve around the player in a circle, I thought it would feel more natural. Secondly, I wanted to use a shape that was easily distinguishable from the enemies, which will all be triangle-based. Lastly, I'm really terrible at designing ships, so I couldn't come up with anything better.
I'll definitely try a different design for the ship, though. In the LD18 version of this, the ship was a circle with a triangle on it, but when it was rotated, it was really hard to tell which side of the triangle was which even despite the fact that it was an isosceles triangle. People playing it seemed to feel that in the middle of the action, it was a bit difficult to discern. What I might do is build some defining feature into the player's sprite - a front window or something fairly visible that would only logically be on one side.

It's funny that you mention the enemies breaking, because I was originally planning on doing that... and then I forgot. Definitely agreed on that matter, though. My one concern is that if they're too small, it will be difficult to use the enemies as protection, which is the main role of enemies attached to anything other than the ship's front. As well, when more types of enemies are added, I'll have to find some way to make the smaller chunks visibly different from each other. That said, it would make more sense that when the ships die, they break, because currently they just suddenly regenerate their armour.
Also, it makes a lot more sense that the player would be blue, so I added that into the current version. I also played with the lightness on the grey enemies, because they were indeed blending into the background too much. The background will change at some point in development, I'm just not sure what to yet. Something within my artistic ability, I guess. In other words, not grey, but not much more exciting.

Anyway, sorry that was a bit of a wall of text. I have a lot of ideas going around in my head right now, and I have yet to actually discuss them with anybody yet. I'm glad you didn't mention any control issues, because that was the biggest problem with my first iteration of the game. Again, thanks for commenting!

[NotHere]

Some changes I would like to see:

1. As Captain_404 mentioned, the main ship is symmetric all around, and the little white dot on it is hard to see sometimes, so knowing which way is forward is sometimes not obvious. Here are some proposals for dealing with that:

a. Make the extra ships a different color (maybe green?).
b. Change the shape of the non-forward extra ships so that they are not the same shape as the forward extra ship.
c. Use a displaced cursor that indicates facing direction.

2. Sometimes, I can move into a limbo zone such that I would no longer be visible at all and I'd have to move quite a bit to get back on screen. Is it possible to make this tighter somehow? (Such that if half of me is scrolled off of the screen, then the other half is visible on the other side). This also applies for the enemy ships and for ships that I've shot down.

3. Allow a slightly faster firing rate? If not I can deal.

Some additions I would like to see:

1. A kill counter and a timer to see how long I've survived

2. Provide other benefits for extra ships? For the most part I always try to aim my forward extra ship at my intended target and shoot it down that way, as it allows me to zoom in and pick it up as soon as it is dead. I find that being able to fire in directions besides forward wasn't helping me do any better. Stray shots might kill enemy ships, but I'm concentrating way more on moving forward and backward to dodge and/or collect extra ships than on collateral damage. Maybe have another base ship type that gets a stronger forward shot for each extra ship (but can only shoot forward as a trade-off)?

Questions:

1. Sometimes I can ram into an enemy ship and turn it into an extra ship, and sometimes an enemy ship will ram into me and turn into an extra ship as well. But other times these collisions will kill me. What are the rules on this?

[TheLastBanana]

Changes:
1. That's a good idea! I hadn't thought of changing their colour, but I might give that a shot if putting in a front window doesn't work.

2. Yep, that's definitely an issue. The zone is there to hide the looping effect from one side of the screen to the other, but it really is quite annoying to lose an enemy (or yourself) out there. I'll have to find a better way to deal with looping. If I can, I'd really like to get a solution like you suggested going, but it opens up a whole bag of unpleasant collision detection problems.

3. Done. You shoot at double the rate of the enemies, but I think it's for the better. I tried turning their rate up, but it just makes it nigh impossible to survive.

Additions:
1. Once I've gotten the basics down, I'll be adding in an HUD with a life bar and a score. I'll probably have it count off how many of each enemy you killed once you die, too.

2. Yeah, extra ships don't do much in terms of offence. The way I see it, they're extremely useful for absorbing shots, so any hits they manage to land on an enemy is mostly a side effect. That said, there have been a few cases where I've actually used extra ships. Still, I agree with you that they seem kind of useless. I'll have to think a bit more about it - your idea intrigues me, but it does mean I'd have to implement multiple ships too

Questions:
1. When you ram into an enemy ship, it attaches to you and, like with any other shot, you lose 1/3 of your health. That'll probably be more clear when there's a life bar. It's also possible that just as you rammed into the enemy ship, it fired a shot a you. In that case, you'd lose 2 health.

Thanks for the feedback!

[st33d]

Extra ships past 6 should have been healing me I think.

The blind wrapping is annoying, but that's quite a bit of work and involves rendering to two positions. How about an arrow showing where you are offscreen?

Entertaining concept though, would be nice to see it expanded.

[TheLastBanana]

I'm planning on having a few power-up items you can attach to your ship along with enemies, so there will be an item that heals your ship. That said, you make a good point - the extra enemies feel a bit useless. Maybe I'll have them replace your attached enemies that are damaged instead of healing the core itself.

I was considering adding an arrow for offscreen, but then there's still the issue of enemies dying offscreen. I'm going to mess with Flashpunk's collision detection and see if I can get a proper wrapping method set up, I think.

EDIT:
Phew! After a day of work, I've finally got the wrapping effect working. It renders properly, and I even have collision detection working. I haven't noticed any framerate hits, but there are now 3 doppelganger entities for every collidable object in order to test collisions in corners and edges.
On top of that, the player is far less symmetrical, so it's easier to tell which way you're going. I also made it so that if you pick up an extra enemy past 6, it repairs one of your damaged ships.
I tried making the ships actually break off into a smaller ship when you destroy them, but I didn't like it. The turrets were too small to provide enough protection even though they were only two pixels smaller, and I liked the look of the whole ships better. That said, there will be smaller ships and larger ships, so that will probably make a difference.