This is my second time here, and I really wanted to charge through and release an actual product that actually worked. At the same time, I wanted to show people that having healthy eating and sleeping habits makes a better end-product. Hopefully, everyone enjoys playing my offering; I’ll be releasing a post-LD version once voting is complete.
Here’s my time-lapse:
None of the music I was working on made it into the game. There wasn’t time to fine-tune a creepy, atmospheric score, and substandard music can kill a game. Feature removed. Instead I spent time on a particle system and a bitmap font so I could put more information on the screen. In the mad dash to make deadline, I forgot to put the little 1/Q, 2/W, 3/E captions above the spell buttons, so people are having trouble figuring out how to fight ;_;
Something really huge I want feedback on is the speed of battles. Some people are reporting “too fast”. But it started out sort-of-turn-based and that was slow and confusing. I think my solution is going to be:
* Add the control text that’s supposed to be above the actionbar
* Slow down the regen rate out of battle
* Add more “stupid-time”. That is, monsters should be disoriented for longer at the start of each battle, and take longer to choose their spells.
* Probably split up spell cooldowns. Right now it’s one recovery rate – cast a big spell, take 30 ticks to recover, cast a small one, take 10 ticks. I’ll change that to individual cooldowns similar to MMO’s. That will also give players a clearer expectation of when their spell will be ready to cast.
* Particle effects for “I’m casting a spell!” and spell nameplates. I feel like having more steps of animation and visual feedback would help prepare players and inform them that yes, indeed, the monster is casting a spell. I think some people just see a bunch of dots fly by and die.
* Internally, split up the battle and map screen. This would have the effect of the map not showing through behind the battle, but then I’d also be able to put a cool backdrop in, and I’d have a lot more latitude to fix controls and graphics that are getting out of hand.
* Look into speed differences between low-end and high-end computers. This should -not- be happening, but since the game has a time element, I may include some more internal time inspection just to make doubly certain fast computers don’t hose the game.
Did I miss anything? Do any of these changes sound like a terrible idea? I want to hear about it.
I’ve played a bunch of the compo entries so far, and I love them to death. Thanks to everyone for making this whole thing possible!