What's up Mezzsoft. I'm already a big fan of your work and I only found it yesterday. I haven't played it because I only have a laptop with no mouse, but I do have a bunch of ideas that just flooded in when I saw your game. I read some of the other players' suggestions and expanded on them too. Game concept and design is my hobby and I thought, since my head was getting too full of ideas to rely on rote memory, I should write some of it down and why not share it with you while I'm at it. I hope you don't mind, but if you like my ideas I've got a lot more, I just don't want to overwhelm you. Here is a link PDF copy and pasted onto google docs.
It's opened now. Thanks!
I don't want to spoil too much, but a select few of these I've already had plans to implement for awhile now. Without being too specific, you can expect some of the features in section 3, 4.1, and 5!
Some of these you've come up with are very interesting - in particular having visible equipment strapped to the mech and the optical mast, but the scale is unfortunately quite small, so showing them in-game might be difficult. Instead of ammunition, I could see a pickup you need to return back to base with being visible on the rear of the turret though, that'd be cool to see.
I'm glad to see you read through it.
The optical mast idea would require upscaling the in game environment, so I knew it was a bit ahead of your current focus. Also it would only be extended/deployed if the top-down data feed was disrupted, including the backup drone feed. I thought it would mix up the game experience and function as a difficulty challenge for an interval of a mission. Then the top-down image would be restored.
As for grabbing supplies I was thinking of a little more animation detail, the mech grabs, it removes the contents storing them internally, and then discards the empty container.
That's completely fair. I'd like to have some additional animations for the player's mech, but it requires swapping out the entire sprite for each frame due to the drawing method. I'll still see what I can do to add those details though.
By the way — I know you said you only have a laptop touchpad, but the game should be pretty friendly to play even without a mouse. I've actually played it quite extensively with my own laptop's touchpad for testing.