Gunwire

A topdown shooter with rewarding combat · By Sheriour

Add to collection

game Community

Gunwire community

Gunwire 0.2.0 released! Sticky

A topic by Sheriour created 32 days ago Views: 20 Replies: 2

Viewing posts 1 to 2

SheriourDeveloper32 days ago

Hello!

This new version of Gunwire comes with 2 crucial changes: a levelling perk system, and a big UI overhaul introducing a HUD.

The perk system took a while get up and running, especially once I started diving into more creative perks, like Bullet Time (slowing game time during dashes) or Scorched Earth (creating patches of fire after grenade explosions). On the whole, the game should be a bit more interesting now, as you can combine different weapons and perk strategies into (still relatively simple) builds.

I noticed that Unity is capped at 82% of fullscreen, which caused the actual size of everything to be much bigger than I originally planned. I reduced all font sizes and backed up the camera by 30%. This results in increased stage area, giving the player a bit more space to move around while kiting the enemies.

A more comprehensive list of changes:

Perk system - Defeated enemies grant experience, allowing player to level up and get stronger.
Spawn system - Instead of enemies just increasing in density, I went with a bit more catered approach where tougher enemies are introduced in dedicated phases
Game over stats - The game will now display player's stats after losing - number of kills, total damage etc.
Stage and UI got resized
Visuals - Full UI overhaul (windows, buttons, bars), together with a new HUD
Visuals - Added particle effects, bloom effects and afterimages
Visuals - Added AOE indicator to exploding Boombot and grenade skill
4 New weapons - Jackhammer, dual revolvers, dual SMGs and dragunov sniper rifle
3 New enemies - Charging Mechadog (periodically charges at the player), Armored Spider (tanky), Chasing Mechadog (fast)
Audio - Changed up some of the sounds where I was able to find better matching ones, especially for weapons.
... And more bugfixes than I could count!

godzilla145z11 days ago(+1)

Was fun. If I may make suggestions. I feel grenade damage needs to level up later on (starting at like 15 or so, not 100% sure on balancing for that) to keep up with enemies and gun damage upgrades. I kinda wish the burning effect had a tiny bit of knock back on enemies away from the center of the flames. I also would like if the dash had either with the burst effect or as a separate power up (maybe even part of it's base ability?), damage as it went through enemies. Just some suggestions to give the player more tools or want to use the different skills more often. It's got potential. And I like that idea of completing objectives to feel like you're making real progression in the game.

SheriourDeveloper11 days ago(+1)

Thanks for the feedback! All suggestions are welcome. Let me also congratulate you on being the first itch.io commenter on Gunwire :D.

For grenade damage, I did consider turning current Impact perk into more general damage boost that would affect both the gun and the grenade. I agree that it kind of gets left behind eventually, so I will try either this or something along those lines.
I'm not 100% convinced about knockback from the flames, unless we are trying to simulate enemies "stepping away from the fire"... I will put that in and see how it feels.
1. On a related note, I did put a proper knockback into the grenade explosion itself in the past (originating from explosion center), but I removed it as I kept knocking enemies into myself.
Dash doing damage on contact was actually my original idea for Ride the Lightning perk. Using a single circular burst was just 10x times easier to implement (especially in terms of visual clarity), but I will revisit this.
On the objectives, there isn't really anything like that in the game at the moment, but I got some ideas:
1. At some point I plan on having proper boss fights, so that will give a feeling of defeating "stages" of the game. I might pair that with actual arena/level transitions, so that the environment isn't exactly the same throughout a run.
2. I was also considering temporary objectives (like... "side quests"? "tasks"? "challenges"?) so that the player has some specific smalls goals to achieve, for some reward. Some simple tasks like "Defeat 10 enemies with grenade explosions" or "Use a whole magazine without missing a shot" or "Don't get hit for 20 seconds". Those could then reward the player with powerups or exp boosts.