Let's start taking yesterday's TODO list and crossing off what we did.
Visuals
the portals need better visual feedback to make the player understand if they're facing or crossing a portal
the "particular" visualization is completely missing
it should be possible to switch visualization (debug/particular)
Bugs/Rough edges
target platform selection, when going backwards, feels sometimes wrong (to investigate)
the fireball gesture recognition is not perfect (you should never feel you wanted to shoot a fireball but failed because of bad input recognition, that's super frustrating)
the "stick" weapon is not great to use and doesn't fit the "free hand combat" feel of the restit's not clear that you get mana by destroying enemiesthe enemy speed should be capped so that you have a reasonable chance to escape and not be totally overwhelmed
Audio
the fireball needs sound effects
the "enemy leeching health" state needs a sound effect
picking up mana/health need a sound effect
Gameplay
the regularity of the grid makes it boring (and hard to understand when you are teleporting)
the player starts in a corner and the enemies are spawned on random platforms... it doesn't feel great/fair
the power-up pickup logic needs to be completed (the pick-up should happen only if you are looking towards the power-up, and only if you are on the same platform as the power-up)there should be health/mana pickups
I planned to start working on visualization, but after some thinking I decided to dedicate today to get rid of what remains of the audio and gameplay sections of the TODO list. It would bother me to leave some easy to fix stuff undone, while I know that about visualization, in the remaining time, I won't be able to do anything spectacular.
First, I'll add the missing sound effects. Then, I'll try doing something about the grid configuration and the spawn points of enemies and pickups.
Let's make a list of the sound effects to be added.
related to health:
pickup taken (mandatory)
pickup spawned (optional)
enemy leeching energy from the player (loop)
related to mana:
pickup taken (mandatory)
pickup spawned (optional)
fireball charge
fireball ready/travelling (loop)
fireball fired/mana depleted
As you can see, there's a reason why I postponed adding sounds for fireball and enemy damage... I had anticipated that they should ideally be related to the health/mana pickup sounds. Now that I have all the pieces of the puzzle, I can proceed.
While adding the sounds, I found a couple bug in the health/mana pickups.
The spawning and wobbling procedural animations didn't play well together, and there was a little "jump" at the state change. I smoothed that out.
I also added a check so that the player doesn't pick-up mana/health if they have a full bar already, as that's the commonly expected behaviour.
While adding the sound effect for the enemy leeching energy off the player, I slightly changed its seek behaviour so that it kinda goes around them instead of reaching an exact spot (also resulting in less clipping of the spheres too near).
If you are working solo, little detours to polish things along the way are more than ok, in my opinion.
The fireball sounds needed a bit of extra care, because of the three details
the charging can be canceled at anytime
an active fireball has its looping sound (moving with the fireball) that must be separated from the firing sound that plays from the position where you actually release the fireball
Overall, nothing too complicated, but still worth mentioning.
While testing I did a bit of tuning of the mana/health adjustment related to pickups, fireball and enemy attacks.
Not all sounds are great and not all volumes are well balanced, but I feel like, even considering the remaining available time, that's if for the prototype audio: I don't think I will touch it anymore.
For the rest of the day, which is not many hours, let's see if we can improve on the grid and spawning logic, and if we can fix the.
I added a check preventing an enemy spawning on the player platform
I had the player start in the middle and not in a corner
I did a bit tuning of enemy speeds and increase in number of enemies for each wave
I adjusted the grid generation so that it's not rectangular, but shaped like a hexagon, which I think is way cooler
I feel like it's starting to get fun!
Let's see a video of the current state of the game, with first some fireball testing and then a full unedited match, until I manage to survive.
Make sure you have your audio on!
You may notice a little glitch: some picked up mana stays "under the head", I already know why that happens... but I'll fix it tomorrow.
And tomorrow... it's going to be a particular day.