Sunday, January 22, 2017

Swoopy Shields and Player Feedback

(This week's build can be found here!)

This week I got some great player feedback, both from friends online and from friends in person. I have several notes on specific things I'd like to try to change in certain levels, but the biggest takeaway by far is that people generally don't play this game with the W,A,S and D keys to move. They just rely on the charge for movement. One thing I want to do for next week is change the game so that it teaches WASD movement earlier on. This is something I actually had planned to do anyway, so I have some ideas on how to do that.

I received and acted on some feedback that the enemy shields should appear as you charge up your attack, not just while the player is lunging forward. I agreed immediately and wondered why I had ever made it work that way in the first place. As it turns out, I didn't want to (or maybe didn't know how to at the time) have to tell the enemy's shield when to move and when not to move.

If the shield doesn't move, the player can easily defeat the enemies by moving before they release the charge. If the shield does move, the player can never outmaneuver the enemy shields, as they are always pointing at the player. I ended up having them listen to when the player begins charging up his attack and for when the player initiates his attack. So the shield follows you, but not while you're actually mid-lunge. This has the added effect of making you seem so fast that the enemies can't track you. Here's a gif:


There are some other changes I made this week as well, but they're relatively minor. See if you can notice them!

As always, charge-up noise is by Javier Zumer. I use and modify this asset under this license.

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