v0.5: XP, Leveling Up

XP Has Been In The Game The Whole Time

Now I'm starting to leverage it.

When you destroy a ship, you get XP. This XP feeds your Level bar, which is new and in the top-right. I am working on the formula that determines the XP required for leveling up, so it'll change slightly, but I think it's actually in a decent spot already. It follows the general curve of "easier to level early, harder to level late," which is good, but could use some rounding at the edges.

The levels do not currently do anything. My next initiative is to add Items to the game, which will be granted to you once per level up. The Items will do cool stuff. They will not be stat boosts. Stat boosts are Upgrades, those will remain in the shop. An example of an Item here would be something like, "Your bullets bounce one time," or "Whenever you heal, release a small damaging pulse." Not that those will definitely for sure be in the game, but they're ideas of the lane I am trying to drive in here.

My goal is for the player to get a few levels quickly early on (maybe hitting Level 3 at the end of the first wave, Level 6 at the end of the third wave etc.) and then be around level 15-20 at the end of the game. I'm figuring that out. And again, each level will give you one item selection. It'll work somewhat like drones.

Other Changes

1. The Perfectionist now has a display in the bottom-right to show the player their current bonus.
2. The Perfectionist's bonus has been reduced from +5% to +2% per second. HOWEVER, the bonus now also applies to projectile and player movespeed. So, you get less of a bonus each second, but now your ship and bullets move faster as you are not hit.
3. I increased the cooldowns on Drones now that the Engineer is getting one every round.
   1. I am considering adding an XP Drone to the game but don't have strong feelings about it yet. +1 XP per second would be really helpful for the first few levels (before the Engineer can have enough Drones to get off the ground) but then be basically useless later on. Is that good design? Who knows.

Thanks!