You ever say something to someone, not really sure if they'll listen to any of it only to later find out they listened to ALL of it? That's me right now. :D
I won't lie. Seeing this back and how every nearly every single thing was tackled is amazing. The aesthetic was improved, the mobile turrets got levels, and we got multiple turrets! It's pretty hype, to say the least. The game has made some huge leaps since last time!
As such, please allow me to give feedback on the current state and where I think improvements can be made next.
First and most important, we need some optimization going on now. When I first played this on stream, there were some major framerate issues. The amount of graphical power being taken by the game was causing encoding problems for OBS. Obviously, this isn't good. As such, looking into optimization of the graphics, as well as providing settings for changing them in game, would be good at this.
Second, we should throw in balance regarding metal earned per wave and the difficulty of the wave. Eventually, the metal you earn per round caps at 200. However, by round 80, this cap of 200 per round causes issues; you can't earn enough metal to keep up with building and upgrading enough towers to make it through. I know with more enemies you get more metal, but it's no where near enough. I'd say the metal earned for finishing a wave needs to keep going past 200, though maybe at a lower rate than prior to hitting 200.
Finally, balance between the different turrets is needed. When trying single-turret use strategies, I found the vents from the fridge were by far the best due to having no cap on how many enemies they can hit at a time while the knife blocks suffered for not being able to hit enough enemies.
Oh, almost forgot! Maybe a function to not control any of the three turrets. Their firing when not controlled is way better, and I think there could be a fun risk/reward combination of temporarily dropping control of all three turrets to let them operate at max power. Maybe add in a time delay after changing which one you control before you can change again, and dropping all control is a slightly longer delay?
Viewing post in Crazy Kitchen jam comments
I learned throughout the years that the more you embrace change and keep yourself flexible, the more fun you'll have building fun stuff and the better you'll get, so hopefully I'm doing an okay job at that LOL. A lot of the great points you wrote about were already in the back of my mind, but it's great to actually hear it from others. I've already begun writing down all of the ideas and feedback I've been given by you and others that have checked out this revamped version! I already wasn't like loving the old aesthetic and the other issues with gameplay balance and stuff weren't helping, but now it's way more fun to work on, glad I made changes!
Optimization is something I'm gonna try to get work on after I reach out to some peeps that know Unreal Engine really well cuz I dunno why this little game runs so poorly on a lot of hardware, so hopefully I can get that fixed up down the line! There may be something unused but active that's CPU/GPU intensive so I'll have to do my research on that, can't beat up baddies at 10FPS LOL.
Options menu is comin', just been bit busy doing tons of work on the gameplay, I can make a quick menu that at least lets you adjust the graphics and I'll add a restart button too.
The metal is capped at 200 but I can easily release that cap, when I get to work on this project again I can send you some test builds to try and see what's the best way to increase the metal after 200! Same with the buildable turrets I'll be overhauling their balance. I think what I could do is increase the speed the knife blocks put out knife piles and raise the amount of piles that can be out at once per block.
I'll keep in mind the idea that you can "let go" the controls and let all 3 Appliances use their passive attacks, I dig the idea of the risk/reward possibilities with that. Maybe there's like a slight firing rate increase buff or something? I can also add in a switch delay so players can't switch between the Appliances as quickly!
Custom mouse cursor and keeping it locked in the game are comin'!
I'll keep in touch when I get the chance to put out some test builds, your feedback has been crazy helpful, thanks for playing!!
Off hand, I would say just giving an extra 1% metal per wave completion would be enough. So you'd get 200, then 202, then 204, and so on until 220, then it jumps to 223. If you follow this out, by the time you're past 50 rounds at 1% a round, you're earning 328 metal upon completion. It's not much, but it can make a difference and it's very simple to change. It could even start at a higher percentage but decreases every so many rounds until it's only giving 1%.
As a means of balancing, there are a lot of ways this could be done. However, one particular idea hit me... why not make it each turret has multiple effects you can upgrade for lower metal prices? So you can upgrade damage, attack range, attack speed, etc.? That way, you can then add more things for each turret, some of which could be unique. There are a few ideas I can name off, but I'm gonna hold onto them for now so you have more room to flex your thinking. :D