Hey there! Whoa, ok let me run through these one at a time :)
- Done! I find the sudden disappearing during reload a bit jarring, but probably because I'm just so used to it always being there. Generally I think it's a good idea and I'll tweak it further as needed.
- I'll see about changing it so that hitting instead of killing a friendly unit gives a sound cue. This would also help resolve the issue where a wounded unit who dies long after being hit by a friendly unit will cry "traitor" but it's not really clear why.
- Done! I essentially made it so that friendly fire works the same way as cover, where there is a 'safe zone' for nearby friendly units.
- Although I haven't ruled it out, I don't currently have plans to add movement collision (though I've been playing a little more with pathfinding, so who's to say). As for cover, each cover object (sandbag, tree stump, rock, etc) has a cover value (actually two, but we'll say one for argument's sake). For instance the big rock might be 100% while the tree stump is say 50%. On top of that, weapons have varying cover penetration values, which increase with unit rank. So rank 0 rifle infantry might have 0% cover penetration while rank 3 sniper might have 50% cover penetration (which would reduce the big rock cover value to 50%). I don't remember the exact numbers, so I'm just guessing on the values above. I plan to address some of those mechanics in the next tutorial, but it might also be helpful to have an info overlay so the player could see those numbers if needed.
- I think you might be seeing the icon that indicates which unit is being trained, in this case rifle infantry. That being said, I would like to add crated weapon powerups at some point.
- Grabby Mode does indeed need some work. I will probably make the icon context-sensitive as you mention so it's more clear what you can do with it.
- Idle and victory animations are on the to-do list.
- You can do Ctrl + R to force restart a mission any time, with the downside being that it doesn't save stats or progress towards unit upgrades.
- I've been meaning to hide the cursor when placing items, as the regular cursor sometimes gets in my way too.
- I went through a lot of fonts and settled on that one, but yeah, that weird period placement bothers me too. I may try some other options.
- I think what you're seeing is the effect of wind on bullets :) There is an indicator up in the top centre that shows the wind speed and direction, but probably I could make this more obvious.
- The upper-right most sticky note is for powerups that are unlocked throughout a campaign (presently ammo/medical/dino drop).
- Units are indeed a little too eager to destroy buildings. I'd like to put some work into this so that the AI can capture buildings as well.
- On the to-do list :)
- Good catch! That is certainly a bug.
- You're probably right. I have the rate at which ability points are earned scale based on unit but not for rank during a mission.
- Snipers are "immune" to (causing) friendly fire :) It is a unique perk of theirs.
- I agree. Investigating that is on the list, but it's a ways down.
- Probably a good call. I think I also still need to ensure they don't place mines next to their own buildings that eventually end up destroying them.
- I think I removed that option so that it only shows up if you've earned a new point. I should probably re-add it, especially since I introduced the option to re-spec skills.
- I've thought of a couple solutions that will fix this in most but not all cases (eg. either team's units & buildings can be placed anywhere on the map), but I should probably just implement one of those fixes so that facing is at least usually right.
- That one's very interesting. Data is stored in separate files for each campaign, but it's possible something in-game carried over. I'll have to check that one out. Ability unlocks need a bit of a rework in general, as they don't update dynamically when a new ability is selected (or deselected)
- That's also a strange one. What is your display's resolution? I might just be missing it as an option.
- Hm.. I'm actually having a hard time remembering what the special weapon was in that level! I guess I'm due for another playthrough of the Beta campaign. As for night missions, there may be something in the works in that area, but no guarantees ;)
- I will look into that. Quick Battle currently behaves like loading a map from the Map Editor.
- Do you mean that the team that normally starts on the left would start on the right, and vice versa? You can currently join either teach (right-click to join second team), so swapping starting positions might not be necessary...
- This bug should be fixed (again) in the next build. As per #13, I hope to make AI a little more proactive about flags.
- Map Editor definitely still needs some work. I'll look into those. Thanks!
- Campaign Editor is probably in need of even more work :) The text system could definitely stand to be a little more powerful. I'll add that to the list.
You bet, Game Maker is pretty well optimized for 2D games like this. I've tried a few times to move towards Unity but it always feels so cumbersome.
I'd love to do larger maps, but it would indeed be hard to fit everything on one screen (less so with 4K+). Something like that may come along down the line, after the 1.0 release.
Prisoners are fairly new to the game. I mostly made them for a specific mission in the "There Will Be Ink" campaign. I'll see about expanding their functionality though.
Yes, please that map along and I'd be happy to take a look. I'd be curious to check out any other maps/campaigns you wanted to share as well. Please send along to hi@summitfevergames.com . I've also created a (so far pretty lonely) Discord server, if you're into that sort of thing.
Thanks again for all your thorough feedback. It's incredibly helpful and very much appreciated!