Thanks a lot for you reply and suggestions!
I’m looking into AI issue. Maybe it got broken when I “fixed” collisions with walls.
Yes, they aren’t making a straight line - they are moving in curved trajectories that end up in Player’s position. Just like in good old Pac-Man :) This is a feature, and for now it seems good. I’d more eagerly improve the pathfinding (or rather add it, because now it’s just randomly walking around the map).
I say it is reasonable to make it so the player can’t survive infinitely
Just done, and indeed it looks really cool.
I have a bit more extensive way for “progression”. Right now I have stories for 6 characters, and most of their unique abilities (that would allow to survive longer) are already implemented, such as piercing or exploding bullets, dash movements, individual patterns of powerups and (not yet implemented) monster spawns. However, they’re badly lacking art - so I’ll need to give 5x6 = something like 30 hours to paint them. Each character will have its own “target” high score and the next character will be unlocked when it’s achieved.
“blue coins” give you 20 but are slightly less common than gold
Yes, I’ve finished implementing powerups now (still want to add a “speed” powerup, but that may come later), and there is plenty of space now for different score for different rarity of powerups (i.e. coin is 10 points, I’ll most certainly add something more rare and valuable in the next release).
I’ll try to prepare the next update in a few hours. I feel like releasing the “current version” may be a bit confusing, so I want to implement some additional improvements (tutorial popups; enemy spawn rules; speed-up powerup; more valuable and rare coins - all of those should be relatively quick and easy).
not sure if any if this feedback is useful but I hope it helps.
It really helps a lot, many thanks! :D