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[marcgfx]

True, it can get very colorful. I have been told nicely my understanding of colors is a little bit different than normal  

This reminds me: I added an option to change the saturation of player/non player elements. Had to make some adjustments to my new repair functionality, but I think this could be ok. One of the troubles I've faced with repair (and buildings in general) is that the prices have to be way lower than the Devaders upgrades. As I don't want crazy high prices I came up with a solution for walls, 4 walls cost 1¢. So when you get 1, you get 3 free so to speak. Now repairing walls is a similar problem, you have something worth 0.25¢ so how much do I charge to repair? Buildings can all be sold for 50% of their value, so this is also what I decided the repair needs to cost. As I don't want to charge a fraction of 0.125¢ to repair a wall, I have a second currency "repair points". 20rp cost 1¢, so if you need to repair something some conversions happen automatically.

Repairing all these wall pieces cost 18rp < 1¢ (they flash/smoke when damaged). You can also see that the saturation for the walls is 0...


17% saturation

[marcgfx]

Added two new towers, the Grinder and Bomb. The Grinder does melee damage, so it only hurts enemies that come in close. The Bomb explodes when destroyed, I've tried to make it so that it mostly explodes when the player attacks, but this still needs some tweaking.

[JobLeonard]

Any plans for synergy? In some games you have mechanics like "if you blow up your own landmine it does even more damage, but you might hurt yourself in the process"

[marcgfx]

Synergy is something I have a hard time wrapping my head around. One element strengthening a different, possibly unrelated element, right? I currently don't have any synergies of this sort at least and I don't know where to start. It sounds like a good thing though. In my mind I would need to add some kind of elemental stuff, e.g. Ice/Fire but maybe synergies can also work without that.

Synergie for this specific case, adding more power to the detonation if shot by the player, could be interesting. The thing is, the Bomb is supposed to be detonated by the player, at least that is what I want to happen. So it's not something unexpected. I don't want any self-harm for player elements. I used to have it (even bullet friendly fire), but there is so much going on already, I think it ends up being too much. If one player explosion causes harm, then I think all explosions should cause harm to be consistent.

[JobLeonard]

Probably a good call on friendly fire in general, yeah. Bullet hells are difficult enough already.

Elemental synergy is also interesting but I was thinking of something much simpler: detect if the bomb was destroyed by enemy damage or player damage. If it was player damage, make it explode bigger.

Alternatively keep track of player and enemy damage dealt to a bomb, and make damage output depend on ratios.

So, say a bomb has 100 hit points. Explosion damage = (5 * enemy damage + 10 * player damage), or something like that.

Or maybe the bomb is "charged" and decays over time (meaning less powerful explosions), and needs to be "damaged" by the player to charge up, but overcharging it causes it to explode.

Curious to see where you'll end up!

Many variations are possible here

[marcgfx]

Thanks for the example. I like the charging idea, think it could be very hard to visualize/make it understandable. I think this might work with something like an energy ball that grows bigger

I've checked out some videos on synergy and also did some thinking/remembering of stuff I have seen. I remember seeing things like reload synergies. Some special actions can fire on reload, so then you want to get your reload lower. Others might power up with longer reload time.

I remember another game where you had different slots you could fill, depending on how the slots were filled you received different bonuses.

Will have to think about this some more, maybe I can come up with something that works. Might just be for later. I'm already swamped with too much to do.

[marcgfx]

I've been giving some thought to what JobLeonard asked about synergy. It feels like something I have been overlooking completely. I've continued to add new stuff like crazy, but I have not really thought about how things work together, besides making sure that they can work together. Most of my mechanics work for themselves, but I am planning to add more connections. It's just good that it was brought to my attention :D

One of the simpler things is that you can now place the turrets that are tied to an ability as if they were buildings. They only show up to be placed now and then though. If you then also get the ability for these turrets, you can use them with the abilty.

While playtesting I came across a visibility issue. It's possible to build buildings where they are entirely covered by the pillars. I've now added a reveal around the players cursor. It looks a little strange, but maybe I just need to get used to it.

[Alain]

So cool to see how the system is evolving! I think it is fine to first add things like crazy and discard stuff later. It's a process