0.4.* hotfix reasons

Non-Obvious Dash Mechanic

The trial is an area where players must perform a dash through a damaging obstacle.

Main problems:

• Visual overload. When players are presented with lasers, crystals, and various labels at once, their attention becomes scattered, making it unclear what action to prioritize. Often, players attempted to dash without having enough mana, and even the "error" sound warning did not stop them.
• Misunderstanding of the “long” dash mechanic, where the dash distance depends on aiming position.
• Even when players shot the mana crystal, they often couldn't tell if they had collected the mana or where it was displayed, leading them to continue shooting the crystal unnecessarily.

Solutions:

• Decomposing the level. Players cannot reach the actual "trial" area without collecting mana first, because a door blocks the way until they shoot the mana crystal. This crystal is the only visually highlighted object within their immediate view (keeping in mind that, based on observation, players tend to have tunnel vision and perceive no more than 10% of the screen content at once).
• Level shortening. I decided there was no need to explicitly teach players about the "long" dash. The important thing is that they learn to dash at all — the extended dash remains an additional mechanic for more attentive players. A win-win.
• Visual feedback for mana: when the player has no mana, they do not emit light; when they have at least one mana, they emit a visible aura.

Key Bindings

Problem:

It was not a critical problem, but one that I decided to address.
In short:
"Players were trying to play a fast-paced precision shooter without using a mouse."

Some tried to play on touchpads or mobile devices. Naturally, this wasn't an issue with the game itself, but it did highlight a few design considerations.

Feedback generally split into two groups:

• Players entering a precision shooter without a mouse — an understandable but expected challenge.
• Players who played a couple of levels, unlocked one weapon out of six, and misunderstood the control design choices, believing them to be poor decisions.

For those unfamiliar with the reasoning, here's an explanation:

In a dynamic game, movement (WASD) must never be interrupted.
Available "continuous press" keys include:

• SPACE
• SHIFT
• CONTROL (playtests showed this is inconvenient; players frequently mispress)
• Conditional keys like C (even less convenient, causing more mispresses)

Thus, only two reliable keyboard keys and two mouse buttons are practically available — a total of four actions.

Weapons were categorized by function:

• Melee, ranged, and defensive
• Two red, two blue, two yellow

The scheme:

• LMB — Red weapon
• RMB — Blue weapon
• SHIFT — Yellow weapon
• SPACE — Modifier (holding SPACE switches the active weapon)

This approach still left one critical action — the dash — unassigned.

Dashing is vital for repositioning, dodging, gaining temporary invulnerability, and engaging enemies preemptively.

As noted, removing the hand from WASD during combat is not an option. Therefore, keys like E, Q, 1, 2, 3 were unsuitable.
Ideally, an additional mouse button would be used, but not all players have mice with extra buttons.

Scrolling the mouse wheel, however, is universally available.
Thus, the dash was bound to mouse wheel up and down.
A cooldown was added to input detection to compensate for wheel inertia.

As a result, feedback like this appeared:

"It would be nice to have a way to dash without using the mouse. But the small portion I could actually play at the start was fun. Unless there was a way to change the controls and I overlooked it."

"Same thing @silly-goober22 said — please, for the sake of all touchpad users, add a way to dash without a mouse."

"Minor complaint — the mouse wheel. Could you allow binding it to another key? Otherwise, great experience."

"I experienced a failure because of the mouse wheel. Please avoid using it for critical actions. Not the best decision overall."

Solution:

The solution was straightforward:

• An alternative dash key was added.
• Full control rebinding was implemented, allowing players to customize inputs freely.

These changes completely eliminated such feedback. Since the hotfix, no further complaints regarding controls have been received.

At the same time, the original mouse wheel dash option remains available.
It remains a strong design choice: players who engage deeply with the game often rely on it as their primary method.

Controlling a character in FLOSS feels somewhat like piloting an aircraft: there are many actions, complex input sequences, non-standard situations, and only one life per level.
Reaching for distant keys is unacceptable — precise control and avoiding misinputs are absolutely critical.