New terminal system
Here's the new workflow for each level:
- Spawn into the level as a humanoid.
- (Explore and find stuff, not done yet)
- Activate a terminal, which looks like this:
- Have a conversation with Penelope (main AI character previously called Soren), who starts the matchmaking process.
- While chatting and waiting, you can still parkour around the level.
- Once Penelope finds a match, she connects you with the other player and reloads the level in PvP mode.
New health system
Previously, health worked as follows: you started with 1 HP, and you could "capture" health powerups to get to 3 HP total. If someone hit you just right, it was still an instant kill. But most shots bounced off and subtracted 1 HP from you.
Now, you can only damage a player if you have the same or higher HP. If there's no chance to damage a player, you'll see a flashing "danger" sign. I also got rid of the instant kills; they felt more like random chance than skill.
Previously, when a player captured a health powerup, it remained theirs until you damaged them, resetting the powerup to neutral. At that point, they could recapture it to get their HP back, or you could capture it and get an edge.
Now, you can capture a health powerup even if it belongs to an enemy. You steal their HP. This encourages you to set up protections around your health powerups. Also, once you get to full health, you can't capture any more health powerups. This encourages you to run on low health so you can steal enemy HP.
This system makes things crazy if you happen to get into a fight near a health powerup. You'll start out at the same HP until player A damages player B, at which point player B is forced to capture the powerup before they can do any more damage. It gets pretty hectic.
In the early game, this sort of back-and-forth is exactly what I want, but I can see it dragging on in the late game. So I will probably design an expensive mechanic (available only in the late game) that allows you to "freeze" powerups in some way, to force the game to end in a reasonable amount of time.
Control point UI
Control points now have icons that change color depending on their owner. Here you can see one point inside my sensor zone, and one outside:
Each captured point earns 2 credits every 15 seconds. The UI shows this "credit delta" beneath your total credits (+2 in the above screenshot).