It’s been a little under a week since the conclusion of the 7DRL and I’ve been excited that people have been pretty receptive to my entry, AutoFire.  I had a lot of fun making it and people seem to be having fun with it too:

In the past week I’ve gotten some good feedback, some of which I’ve been able to act on.  The first bit is that folks are excited about drifting and controlled skids in the game, and I realized that by allowing players to drop below zero grip (into the red) is really punishing…  It’s very hard to regain traction without crashing.  I updated the game to not allow the grip to drop below zero, so a moment of control will allow players to get control back…  This makes it a little more about deliberately losing control and then regaining, Ridge Racer style.  This is something I want to continuously refine, and supplement with skid marks and other speed feedback.

I also added a “preview” in the grip meter of how much grip you’d lose if you do a maneuver at that moment.  It’s difficult to figure out the right type of feedback for a keyboard-driven game like a Roguelike.  I wanted to keep the “one input, one turn advances” feel of a typical Roguelike, so it’s hard to give much information about what your next action will result in (without mouseover or two-step advancement) .

People also still have a little difficulty understanding the four weapon mounts and their individual cooldowns.  I added a bit of information about the weapon that would be fired when showing a viable target.  I will probably also show a prediction of the damage to be done and more on-map indications of the weapon to be fired… perhaps a change in the crosshair or displaying the weapon sprite.

Some others suggested that the game was too easy, which I won’t deny.  I was pretty stingy with the drops early in development, but for the 7DRL release I worried that all the work on weapon upgrades I did wouldn’t be noticed, so it ended up pretty generous. The goal eventually is to create situations where you have to drive fast to get the extra attacks and stay alive, so it’s definitely a goal to balance things better. Once I get enemies obeying line-of-sight (haha) and reduce their hit chance firing at a high-speed target you’ll have more tools at your disposal and I can crank up the difficulty.

Some additional things to come:

• World tiles that aren’t cobbled together from a number of sprite libraries (they were so damn ugly)
• Competent world generation that feels like a place to drive.
• Loot improvements such as armor patches that must be mounted on a single side, improved tires (grip) and improved engines (speed).
• Enemy vehicles (At last! This was a painful cut for 7DRL but I ran out of time)

Not to mention an actual adventuring environment with areas to advance through, assassination contracts, vehicle gangs, and so on. So much to do!