Still here. Just working on a new mapgen for branching missions. That's all.
Preview: https://streamable.com/ljo1ee
It's going a bit slow because I went back to Warframe to get more inspiration about the mapgen and mission types and ended up getting sucked in lol.
The project did actually start as an Android game, but as I worked on more player-features, it became more difficult to keep the control scheme touch-friendly. With that, I decided to discontinue the mobile version. I'm not very comfortable with requiring peripherals for a mobile version, nor do I have time to maintain and test on both platforms while at this point in development, unfortunately.
I do appreciate the sentiment. :)
Been working on fixing the load times and it's not been going very well, tbh. I might pivot and work on other features if it doesn't work out soonish. Sorry about that.
The other changes I've made include:
The accuracy of the Linear Rifle and Heavy Rocket Launcher are both heavily dependent your stability. It's the small white bar on the left of the radar.
Make sure you don't have a red STABILITY warning flashing on your dash before firing. You can regen stability faster when you're grounded and stationary. If you're being mobile, you regain stability faster by not changing directions. Dodging and jumping repeatedly also damages your stability.
Other tips are to glide rather than walk as walking can cause your aim to quake and make your shots go off-target.
For the HRL, this is less important if you use it to attack big and chunky targets on the ground from an elevated position (eg, flying). The shot will land near them and still cause massive damage from the explosion. It's much less useful against highly mobile targets that fly around and that is by design.
Really good moves, and in a chonky boi to boot. Glad you're enjoying it a lot!
I've got a bunch of ideas for new enemies but I'm still thinking up ways on how they can be distinct and fun to encounter. Maybe a helicopter enemy with a Linear Rifle (like the Chrysalis from Peace Walker) or tanks with a billion machineguns (like a pimped-out Leman Russ). Will probably take some time to work on because recent schedule has been pretty packed though.
Unfortunately, I currently have no plans of putting it up on Steam or similar because I don't think it's right to ask money for it in its current state, nor for how I work on it so irregularly. It's not even a "game" as I would consider it more of a grab-bag of features I thought were fun or was experimenting with for a concept. Heck, even the menu and UI layouts are more for my benefit than anyone else's! I'm actually pretty surprised at the reception considering how kludged together everything is.
That aside, I appreciate the kind words and I'm glad you liked it!
Quality's alright and yeah, the wave survival eventually loops in on itself unfortunately. If you want more of a challenge, try the branching missions and aim for a high rank. Most of the enemies got toned down when branching mission was introduced so a player not at 100% health/armor wouldn't get erased, especially since you don't automatically get a health/armor refresh after every wave.
That large missile dodge! Love that shit!
Hm, I've tried dynamic FOV based on speed before and I didn't feel like it worked well. The camera damping already kind of makes your mech smaller when you go forward very fast and I felt that worked better.
As an aside, my favored values for camera damp is X = 0.5, Y = 0, and Z = 1. It keeps the mech firmly on screen but it doesn't block the lock ring and it ZOOMS when I boost forward.
Rally Points are going to get overhauled in the next update. Instead of having to take a non-paying contract to get them, you can call them in for a full resupply before picking the next contract. They'll be on a cooldown after that and can only be called in again after finishing a certain number of contracts. Might make the cooldown be affected by a meta-difficulty like Sector Security or something. Like operating in high security areas means it takes longer between resupplies. Also resupplies will probably have a mounting score penalty or cost, eg 1000 score for the first, 1500 for the second, 2000 for the third, etc.
Yeah, that's pretty sick!
Self-dampening of the player's SFX in COCKPIT mode does sound useful and was requested before. I'll try to look into it once I get some other stuff sorted out. Hopefully I can find some way to get it to work with being able to toggle between modes.
You kinda hit the nail on the head with the last part. Stability was intended to reward players who stayed on the ground more. They could fire faster and more accurately and could absorb hits without flinching, especially since you recovered stability very quickly on the ground. Some of the heavier weapons even rely on being grounded to be effective. On the other hand, I felt like aerial players could already take advantage of their speed for hit-and-run tactics to not be affected as much by low stability (shorter engagement times, closer ranges, etc).
On watching your stuff, you didn't seem to be having any particular issues with stability, even during the segments where you were chaining jumps, bursts and kicks. It seemed more to happen when you were under sustained attack, like against Boulder during the second stage, or when you lost all your ARMOR after that engagement (ARMOR also reduces stability damage as long as its non-zero when you take damage). At these points, it's usually wise to try and gain back some stability in cover rather than run it red and lose out on offensive capability.
And yeah, the Large Missiles basically live up to their legacy in the AC games by being broken af. xD
Hmm true, I should absolutely try and make braking an independent stat instead of just derived from weight.
Low booster gameplay definitely feels more weighty (if that makes sense) with having to turn in wide circles instead of being able to move omnidirectionally seamlessly. Making boosters something you always have to use, else you get punished, has always been my pet peeve about games like AC.
Funny you mention MechWarrior because the walking/running scheme is basically a MechWarrior-style Legs > Torso system but automated to work with "arcade" controls. I actually implemented it as a test when I saw MW5 had a new FPS control mode and it was janky as heck and thought I could do one better. You could say it was heavily inspired by the Scorpion tank controls from Halo.
I actually tried implementing it to work with booster movement and it looks surprisingly natural.
As an aside, it's close to how I hope AC6 handles the unlocked combat with free camera and movement. Excited for the gameplay preview later!
Hm, idk about rank. But I've been thinking of at least recording a player's top-scoring missions + variables (map size, mission length, extracted successfully, etc) and saving an accumulated "money" stat from total score. The reasons I'm unsure about actually implementing records that recording stuff like kills of a particular enemy might get easily deprecated if I rework or remove enemy or mission types or change how the data is recorded. So updates might break the count or just be another minor feature I have to make sure doesn't break when messing around.
Like apparently DEMO mode is broken again. xD
Yoo, ground-type gameplay! I'm always surprised people seem to like the walking/running a whole lot. Guess Bungie really did hit gold with the vehicle controls in Halo. The lower energy costs definitely feel nice as well.
I've definitely also been hearing a lot of feedback on the enemy missile spam. Probably going to rework some enemies so there's a bigger interval between firing during streams of missiles. That way, you have more time to get out of the way or into cover instead of eating the entire stream in half a second. Alternately, have them fire the missiles in a shotgun-pattern so it's harder to dodge but only half the missiles will ever hit the player.
As for the Ground Burst delay, it probably has something to do with your mech being underweight. At lower weights, you get more speed than usual from your boosters so braking takes a bit longer. Combine that with your Impulse III boosters and boy howdy.
That aside, glad you're enjoying it!
It's definitely a cool idea.
I've been playing with a manual aim toggle for a bit. Basically just turns off/on the FCS if you hold the "lock-on" button, and it works okay. Everything being projectile-based (except lasers) makes it take some getting used to. Just needs to take the player's camera settings into account more since at higher speeds, the offset between the player (the origin of the projectile) and the camera (origin of the aim point) can get really large so shot trajectories can get really wonky.
Maybe an additional function like VD where it automatically toggles to a cockpit view when you turn off the FCS would be useful. Basically minimize the offset between view and shot origins. An optional zoom function would be slick as well.
Personally don't know about making weapons that absolutely require manual aim. Maybe hitscan weapons? They're definitely harder to balance alongside the auto-targeting.
Much thanks for the kind words and happy to have you along!
I don't know much about getting a team and publisher together so I'm not holding my breath for anything like that, unfortunately. It's probably just going to remain as it is: a fun side project which I add to what I think works and (try to) fix what's broke.
Best advice I can give for managing energy is to not have all your weapons active all the time. Each active weapon adds a "drain" to your generator which causes its energy "output" to slow down or even lose energy if it's great enough. You can deactivate weapons by holding the Weapon Action button (default is "R" key for KB and "A" or "Cross" for gamepads) and pressing the desired weapon "fire" button. You can also switch to a higher output (albeit lower capacity) generator.
Mission UI is definitely rough. I can say that it's basically been kludged around the circular radar since that was really the first dedicated UI feature that got implemented. I should definitely write this down somewhere accessible, but I'm planning on changing it up in the future. Quick rundown of the current scheme is as follows:
Otherwise, the build stats sorta do what they say (Arm speed, arm angle, torso speed, torso angle). The mobility stats usually display two values, one being their performance on the ground and the other in the air.
In any case, I'm glad you're liking it!
Dunno if it'll be useful at all since the stats are usually in flux. I'm constantly tweaking stat floors and ceilings between builds even by just a little.
And even if you did have the base stats, they probably wouldn't reflect perfectly on the build unless you're able to maintain an exact 5000 weight. Generally, mobility parts are just rated for X effectiveness at a baseline weight (5000, in this case). Anything above and below that will adjust the final stats proportionally. Other stats may use only the weight of certain parts to derive their value, like Torso Twist Speed using Arms + Hand weapons + Shoulder weapons weights.
That's isn't true for some parts though. Sensors and Targeting are pretty straightforward and usually just display their raw stats regardless of unit weight.
Yeah, dash enforces a minimum speed now. I've been trying to differentiate movement types so there's some situations you'd use one mode over another and vice versa, as well as making builds have more variety in their strengths.
If you want to change dash direction quickly, you'll have to use the Assault Pack and use the dash input again while dashing (chain dashing). Otherwise, jump or burst to change directions, then dash again to continue moving at speed.
No plans for a mobile port, unfortunately. I don't have access to a mobile device I can test it on with any accuracy.
Funny you should ask that though since the project actually did start on mobile. Control scheme and overall gamefeel was significantly different back then. I made the decision to focus on PC because I couldn't comfortably fit in the scheme I wanted with only a mobile phone.
ye olde footage:
