Tweaking and pacing

After last week the main problem was the pacing of the game. It felt slow and didn't feel exciting enough. To fix this problem, we did a lot of tweaking of values and playtested vigorously. This took some time that we couldn't spend on creating content. But as of right now, we're going for quality over quantity.

Programming

In the programming department a lot of new pickups were implemented:

• Speedboost pickup
• Tower health pickup
• Firerate pickup

Speedboost pickup

The speedboost pickup does as it says, it gives a speedboost. We also tweaked the general movement; we increased the main speed a bit, and increased the acceleration tremendously so the movement feels more direct. We needed this directer movement otherwise the speedboost would just make the castle unwieldy.

Tower health pickup

This week we made the distinction between the castle walls and the tower, the player dies when the tower's health reaches zero, but with the regular cannon, you can't just hit the tower. The castle walls block the bullet and absorb the damage. When their health reaches zero, a damaged wall is shown instead and bullets now pass through to the tower. The tower health pickup heals a certain portion of your tower health back.

Firerate pickup

The firerate pickup is quite op right now, but as it says, when you pick it up your firerate increases a lot. This gives you the ability to blast throught the enemies defenses and attack their tower. The increased firerate expires after a certain time has passed.

Laser cannon

Next to those pickups, we also implemented a new cannon type: the laser cannon. As of right now its ammunition is infinite, but the damage and range aren't too crazy either.

Art

In terms of art, a base particle system was added, which now holds the explosion particles. It is already hooked up to the shooting behaviour.

This week, we adjusted the proportions of the castle meshes so everyting reads more clearly. The cannons are now part of the silhouette again, as of before they got lost inside the castles and were not clearly visible

We also added the meshes of two more special cannons, the laser and the shield. Lastly we added the mesh for the health pickup. Overall not too much progress this week in terms of art. By next week the last cannon and all the pickups should be finished, so the last week can be focused just on the environment.