hey dude, been following your progress, love the idea and presentation. this is the perfect fit for mobile. i like the use of color, my main concern would be losing focus on threats without distinct outlines amidst other particle effects. keep at it.
Thanks! Really appreciate the feedback. I've had this comment mentioned a bunch before (The delicious particles coming off of the enemies are often confused by players as bullets). I'll be experimenting with solutions for this in the coming days!
Here's the rest of my to-do list:
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Evaluate death particles in game discussed above!
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Bullet behaviour to optimise their presence on screen: (kill them as soon as they aren't a threat to the player). This should not only lower the amount of objects that the game has to keep account of, but also reduce the visual clutter in the most intense firefights.
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Lava experimentation: I'm considering making the last level a volcano with a rising tide of lava, from which bubbles will slowly expand from and burst, showering the level in projectiles. This would also be considered for earlier levels, in which I want to keep the player moving upwards.
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Shell enemy: I want an enemy that can only be killed when it comes out of it's defensive state to fire, so I'll be putting some deisgns together in the coming days.
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Design more mid-tier enemies: At the moment, I only have huge bosses with large amounts of health or cannon fodder with a maximum of 3 health. Because of this, I've found that later in the game once weapons are fully upgraded you can just churn through the levels without actually paying attention. Like with many schmups, I want some enemies that take maybe 10 to 15 health that dish out some damage to prepare the player more for the approaching bosses.
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Wiggly bullets: I want some more experimental paths for bullets, such as curved trajectories, spirals and crazy concentric patterns.
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Experimenting with walls: I've been very hesitant to include permanent blockages in the level, but walls are something I'm considering looking at for more level variation (particularly with the introduction of themed areas). These will likely be basic obstructions, rather than complex mazes that you often see in other vertical platformers. Whether these would be permanent, designed sections or generated is yet to be decided.
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Bombs/Powerups/Collectibles: This has been mentioned at several testing sessions, the possiblity of bombs that destroy all enemies on screen/deal massive damage, temporary powerups such as shields, bullet time and x2 shooting and possibly coins that can be spent towards skins/upgrades is definitely something I'm receptive towards. This is particularly important as folks keep maxing out the upgrade ladder and not having any incentive to continue collecting them. Something else I'm looking into is more intelligent powerup spawners; at the moment you can just chill at a spot long enough and wait for power ups to spawn, meaning you can get the top tier upgrades in the first section of the game. Looking to games such as raiden, I might have them as drops for the mid tier enemies I mentioned before.
- Flapping bird enemy: Whilst designing my other game, COCAPULT, I designed a very satisfying seagull enemy that would flap across and drop a rock on the player. I will likely have in this game a flock of these enemies that will strafe across the screen and do the same.
- Background decoration/General level theming: At the moment, the game has distinct colour changes for each level (colours subject to change) but the main level chronology is forest, desert, cavern, glacier, volcano, so I need palletes to reflect that. I'm hesitant to put anything else in the background at the risk of distracting from projectiles on screen, but there's definitely the possiblity of decor for the side bars.
- Hopping down enemies: An enemy design that doesn't move left and right, only jumps downwards from platform to platform. I currently already have the divebombing enemy, so unsure if that will cause too much confusion.
- Side traps: Traps at the side of the level that force the player upwards, so for example an enemy that if it shares the same Y position as the player, fires sideways. I'm thinking to keep it in theme with the game, this would be a spike (that opens it's eye when firing).
INTERMISSION:
Here's the boss bat!
- Improve boss functions: Whilst I am happy with the mini bosses, I want the larger bosses to have more of a gravitas to them. At the moment, they're very similar in function (Move left and right, rebound off the walls at the side and launch incredibly complex bursts of projectiles) and I want to investigate different movement methods (See the minibosses I've designed) or different bullet patterns for different movement states. The other option may be making these bosses the second out of 3 bosses per level, making the final one for each section even more powerful.
- Life mechanics: Looking into ways of refilling health, as I'm unsure 5 lives is anywhere near enough to beat the entire game with (I've managed to beat 8 out of 10 levels so far on 5 lives). This might be your points replenishing your hearts, bosses dropping hearts or collectibles giving you a target to gain a life (See Mario). It's a difficult balance for me to strike, as being too generous with life systems will deprive me the restarts that generate my revenue. Compared to Corporate Salmon (that shows an ad after 5 deaths, I'd be probably having to do it at every game over to make an equivalent amount. Whether I drop the initial number of lives to three and allow a maximum of 5, I will just have to experiment.
- Shotgun Jump Enemy: as a Subtle nod to Downwell, I want an enemy in the game that shoots a randomised blast of bullets downwards and leaps upwards.
- Artillery: One of the earlier experiments that I'm considering re-introducing is explosive artillery; projectiles that explode with a blast radius that engulfs nearby objects. Whether this would be a player weapon or an enemy type, I'm unsure about.
- Bounce/Boost Pads: Looking at implementing jump pads to quickly elevate the player. My only concern with this is it could accidentally boost the player into the path of an enemy, so I may make it so you have to actively push up on it to activate. This would give some more variety to boss battles, providing the option of jumping on their heads (The first boss for example).
- Implement ad functionality: Getting this in early is often useful, as it keeps it present in your mind to design the project to accomodate for ads (rather than bolting them on at the end of the project). As mentioned before, I think this is the reason for such stigma around advertisement based revenue generation in the indie scene, but I think if we're responsible with our implementation of ads we can make it work for the customer and us. Premium games are a much harder sell on iOS, Apple takes a 30% cut and advertising after store features still generates you revenue from your users. My main stance is give people the option to remove ads and highlight in the description humanise yourself so folks know the ad revenue is helping you keep making games.
- Fully implement settings: At the moment the settings symbol is just a dead object. I'll be adding the pop-up/sliding functions in the coming days. I've opted for making my buttons significantly bigger for this project, so I'll need to do more dynamic menus to share the space.
- Dividing enemies into levels: This is one I've not done yet, but I'm considering having distinct enemies for levels rather than a mish-mash of all of them throughout the experience. This could help drive the game more thematically but also help the player plan for what to expect on certain levels. I already have the structures in place to accomplish this (Have all the enemy types stored in a list that I make random batch selections (E.g. Enemy Types 1-4, Enemy types 8-12) so assigning those groupings to levels rather than random generations wouldn't be a stretch.
- Fix boss snake alignment issues: at the moment, the boss snake alters its floor slam position based on what screen it's playing on. I'll be looking at standardising it rather than relying on the width/height of the screen.
- Exporting a build for Testflight: This is a tricky one, as the tool I use, Stencyl has been going through a lot of changes recently which haven't been able to keep up with Apple's requirements. I'm unsure as of yet whether I am able to export builds to Testflight anymore since I'm on an earlier version. I also have to update the project to the latest build to get iPhone X support, but apparently there's been a lot of performance issues on that front (Which I should note they are actively working to fix). Point of all of this is to say it might be a while before I can get builds out, but we will see.
Right! That's enough chatter, time for me to get to work on this list! Glad you're all enjoying what I've produced so far, stay tuned for more soon, I'm aiming to get this project done ASAP as it's been 6 months since Corporate Salmon launched and I haven't shipped anything since!
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