Another slow weekend with not a lot to show yet.  I’ve been digging into my simulation model again and working on some of the halting, awkward motion that both my tactical maps and, surprisingly, my overworld maps have had.  I’ve gotten a few complaints about it, and I couldn’t deny that it was really harming the feeling of speed I wanted to maintain.
A couple weeks ago I revised my input system so the player could queue up movements and move many squares quickly. Â However, the player was not able to move that smoothly because the system always gave the rest of the world a chance to move before processing the next player action. Â However, this happens even if there is nobody to move (such as when the player is going very fast and executes multiple moves per enemy turn), and even if there were no enemies at all (such as in the overworld)!
This was a useful thing to iron out, and I created a system where the game will stretch out executing any turn based on the longest time given it. Â This defaults to 0.2, but with this, the player could execute a full, second-long super attack if he wanted. Â Also, if no enemies are on screen, their moves are shorted or eliminated if they are far outside of the player’s awareness. Â This gives me a lot more flexibility.
I also have turned into a bit of a Unity Asset Store addict.  I found some great music, vehicle models, terrain textures and even some more dang rocks…  it’s rather shocking how hard it is to find rocks that look good and fit with the rest of your stuff.  Looking forward to the next thing on my list, which is to create “templates”, or groups of objects to use in level generation.  Should be fun!
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) .
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.