Third-person
When I've shown the game to new players, it usually takes a good five minutes before they even vaguely understand what's going on. I think the biggest point of confusion is: "what exactly am I?"
The game is so strange that they have no point of reference. If you're making an FPS or a platformer, people are familiar. But in this game, the combination of vector graphics and strange movement is a lot to take in at first.
Another problem is the fact that at any given time, you can't aim at half the screen because it's blocked by the wall you are attached to. It makes sense, but it's confusing to a new player in first-person because they don't even realize they're attached to a wall.
A third-person camera alleviates some of these issues. I realized that as far as gameplay, nothing is really lost in the switch to third-person, except for the perennial problem of what to do when the camera is inside a wall. Right now, I'm just culling everything in the way.
Ideally, I would still render blocking geometry, but with low opacity. In fact I'll probably do that eventually. This works for now though.
I've always had a janky third-person option (as seen in the previous devlog), so this was just a matter of cleaning it up and making it work for real.
Ability overhaul
Here are my gameplay goals:
- Create tension by making it possible to be killed at any point in the game.
- Encourage a lifecycle of progression through the early/mid/late game without destroying the tension.
- Minimize the number of mechanics and wring everything possible out of them by making them interact with each other.
I'm using an ability system with upgrades to accomplish goal #2 (progression). I immediately thought of a bunch of crappy abilities like stealth, skip cooldown, invincibility, etc. You would buy these upgrades at your spawn, then switch between them in the heat of battle.
The problem is, these abilities obliterate goal #3 (interaction between mechanics). So you press a button to become invincible for a few seconds; that can become an interesting idea (see TF2) but on its own there's nothing else for it to interact with.
These abilities do nothing but augment your ability to kill the other player, which isn't very interesting. There's much more potential for interaction if instead you augment the environment.
I already had a bit of this, since you could spawn a minion by capturing a certain point. But that doesn't really allow player expression; it's just a checklist for the player to fill out. Capture points A, B, and C.
All this to say: I turned the minion spawn mechanic into an ability. I actually cut it down to three abilities: spawn sensor, spawn teleporter, spawn minion. And there are no cooldowns, it's just a flat fee for each item spawned.
Here's the new menu that pops up automatically at your spawn point. Hold one of three buttons to upgrade that ability.
Sensors and minions are mostly done, but I haven't even started teleporters.
Lots of work to do!