Oh and while I'm here I might as well throw out a bit of an update, let you know what we're doing.
Part of the reason we released a build this early is that we wanted to be pretty transparent about our development process. Get people involved in what we're doing, let them ask questions (though some things are off limits), see our process, or make suggestions. It is pretty ridiculous for a roguelike to put up a playable demo in 6 weeks of development time, most of our time was spent making and testing generation systems so what you really have is representative of 2 weeks working on actual game systems (e.g. bad guys, the boss, the power ups, etc).
Well that and attempting to attract an artist and someone to do music/sound.
Which brings me to my first major update!
ART!
Medevenx has volunteered to do art for us! The mockup he presented is the first bit he has done. What exists in that screen shot is our first 16x16 tileset, the hero (we went with the orange one hoping to have good contrast against all of our future tilesets), and a couple of potential badguys.
We're really happy with what Medevenx has given us so far and look forward to working with the guy.
Badguys and Bosses
We have also been working very hard on making our badguys more interesting. We have implemented our first round of "badguys that do-stuff" and are starting work on the game's second boss.
Eventually there will be enough bosses that you can fight 4 different bosses throughout the course of a playthrough. Since the individual bosses gain new abilities the later in the game you fight them we wont run into Binding of Isaac's problem of each level being only one or two bosses. You could fight any boss at any "level" of the game and it will hopefully be different and provide a unique experience. (Not that there is anything wrong with BoI, it is one of our major influences here. <3 Edmund).
Fighting the same "Bomber" boss 4 times doesn't really adequately express what our end goals for the game's experience is. The Bomber is defeated roughly the same each time and it is a bit repetitive 4 times in a row, but ideally you'd only see that bomber once per run through at most. So the Bomber having the same memorable win strategy is a good thing in my opinion.
Player ControlsWe hear what you're saying about the player needing more "weight," and we sort of agree. We really like the freedom of movement allowed by our current controls and love the response (especially with an Xbox controller), but we are fiddling with some tweaks like giving the Hero some acceleration. We wont be implementing this until we're happy with it, which could be a while or honestly may never come at all if we can't get it how we want it. Essentially we'd rather sacrifice that feeling of 'weight' for really tight controls, and will do so if it comes down to it.
CameraWe have always had designs for a fancier camera, for now we're just happy the damned thing works at all! We're working on a tweening system (I hate that word, tweening. Uck). Again, it wont be in the game until we're happy with it, although this isn't something we need to be 100% happy with to implement... maybe 80%.
Anyway we're working on it.
Health SystemsFor now we're just going to have to agree to disagree.
The game is still intended to be a RogueLike, albeit a forgiving one. You die, you're out, new game. We're also going for a short, replayable experience (currently we're at about 15 minutes for our "speed runs," we're looking at an hour TOPS with 15-20 minutes for someone who knows what they're doing and has a handle on what the generation system can throw at them). We're aiming at about a 40-60% "win percentage," which is insanely forgiving for a RogueLike as is.
Additionally we REALLY disliked having health drops from enemies. It became a sort of obligation to "grind" badguys for health before a boss. Not only did it seem contrary to the spirit of a RogueLike, it just wasn't fun.
So right now the badguys are just a "gauntlet" you have to survive between bosses, trying your best to have enough health left over to tackle the next boss so he can top you off if you're victorious. I'm not entirely convinced this is the best direction for us to go, but for right now it is the best direction we have available to us.
We're considering Half-Life styled health dispensers placed randomly through the game. Something that we can make a limited resource (in the grand RogueLike tradition). We'll see how development goes.
So that's about it. We hope to have a major update by the end of the week. It should include another boss, bad guys who do stuff, better description on what the randomly placed power ups do (the +damage, +armor, etc), aaaaaand we might have to take that landing sound effect out entirely since I can't seem to find a decent replacement.
This is assuming we don't break the damned thing this week. OK, I lied. We did break it. Several times. So this is assuming we can fix it again and keep it fixed.
Game Development is a cruel mistress.
Cheers.
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