Allocating time for this project is harder than I planned. But still, making progress!
Now it only needs some particles, and it should be good.
***
Also, I've come across another issue. It is still related to the game's difficulty, and my attempts to make it the less frustrating. It's simple, look quickly at this screenshot, and guess if the dot are aligned:
<img src="http://pix.toile-libre.org/upload/original/1481393507.png" >="" <="" p="" data-vivaldi-spatnav-clickable="1">
If you'd have just a quick look, you could think that they are. But…
Problem is, the player doesn't have the time to check the alignment. Once the measure is done, everything is erased. So they have just a fragment of a second to tell if their beats are roughly the same as the ones above. More than often, it appears that yes, they are. But the game quickly remove everything to reveal that no, they weren't. Players don't have any clue about which one was wrong, and if it was too late or too soon.
This is kind of a recent issue, since the game was originally designed with the two lines close to each other. But I then had the idea of a screen split, and moved them on both side. Now that they are far away, they have become less readable!
So far I came with two solution. The first one is to draw a grid on the screen.
This fix the issue, but… It's a grid, and it's ugly. Not only it makes the screen too loaded, but it also make this presentation feels more… "mathematics". It can be improved visually, but it would still result in the beat presented as a grid, and not just an indication relying on the music.
Alternatively, I could add some animated beats that would go to the center:
Again, this could work fine, but… I'm feeling I'm adding complex behaviors to a simple system, just to answer a specific concern. Why would there be additional beats? Why going to the center? Do they disappear then? Or should be they displayed under the textual feedback?
There are other imaginable way. Like instead of making beats appear on the lines, they come from up or down to a central line. This completely change the current look of the game. And again comes the question: where would we display the text? I like the symmetry, and I'm trying to figure out how to keep it while solving this problem.
So for now, I'm going with the grid. I'll try to make it look nice, and not too invasive. Maybe I'll come with another idea latter. Suggestions are welcome!