Ended up with this monstrosity and got to 51 before I quit
Never bothered using a second gun, although I considered making a pure bullet breaker...
If there was a "combine all" button and/or sorting on the modifiers I would have, but it seemed like too much of a hassle so I just stopped paying attention to new mods I got.
It also seems like the lower-tier mods might be too good? This baby clocked in at 1,837 dps with bullets that flooded the screen then all tracked to whatever enemies were alive. I'd pre-flood the screen then kill every enemy within seconds, the guys who shot bullets on death being the only threat.
I'd specifically look at the balance of the costs, maybe making some of the low tiers cost more and high tiers cost less. But I only did this one run so maybe you can make even MORE broken shit with high-tier mods.
There could be better audiovisual feedback on enemy hits/kills. The "pop" sounds too... friendly? Some kind of quick bleepy explosion would be cool. And maybe flashing a color on hit. The explosion visual could also use a bit of work, it feels more like the enemies just pop out of existence than "exploding."
I don't like these kind of late game scenarios where the player basically gets too strong to lose and the game can never catch up. Some devs/players do, so you might not want this advice, but I think making enemy damage scale, or enemy health start scaling exponentially per wave would do the trick. Or both.
My game happens to be... remarkably similar, so you might be interested in ripping off some of my "support items" for some of your modifiers. I know I wrote "bullet shrapnel" and "bullet ricochet" in my notes after this session.
Also, great job on the fucking optimization dude, real nice
I personally use second gun to apply status effects, having different weapons for different enemies isn't working out that great so far.
Sorting and combine all sound reasonable, I'll probably implement them later.
Yeah, balance is a big issue. Right now it's too easy to just use a weapon that floods the screen with bullets, it become even easier compared to the previous version, cause minelayers' mines are no longer triggered by shots. I was going to add an enemy that reflects your bullets back at you, but it's turning out to be harder than expected. As for rarer modifiers, it's also a problem, cause you want to make them unusual, and leave boring +damage, +firerate, etc. for more common ones, but in the end it makes them more situational, while basic mods reliably boost your damage output.
And yes, you can make something broken using them, e.g: stacking Exp after Exp increases the amount of shrapnel exponentially, and can create a gun that deals thousand of damage with a single shot. Or putting Ho after Tra, which creates a gun that shoots bullets that shoot homing missiles...
I'm planning to make the game harder by tweaking existing enemies and introducing new ones, but balancing that is gonna be hard. And as I've said in the comment to your game, I don't like the idea of just increasing the enemy hp.
Reached level 53 with my good old radiation build before getting distracted while watching TV and getting blown up by a bomb-ship cluster.
The UI feels more polished and the new enemy is nice, though I don't fully understand when it starts shooting. It is though as hell, thats for sure. The weapon testing is great, very welcome addition.
Later this week I will try to use the more advanced modifiers in my builds, for my run I didn't get any of them till round 20+ and at that point my build was fully online and replacing anything would have reduced its power.
Yeah, unfortunately, I didn't manage to add enemies that "punish" the player for shooting indiscriminately, but they're still in development, they will be in game.
Actually, that enemy has an X-shaped indicator(kind of similar to the laser eyes meme), which becomes brighter as the enemy is getting ready, but I guess it's not prominent enough.
The good thing is that bullets don't inherit any momentum by default, and only do so if you add speed upgrades, and even then it only becomes a problem if you add too many of them. So, if I were you, I would just exchange them for something else.
Having fun cheating with the reload-shot mechanic ;), please don't fix. Not sure if the upgrades are working, i drag them to the gun or crafting slots but nothing happnes(they dont 'stick' to the slots)
Oh, upgrading does work. You start dragging the upgrade, the slots turn white if they can accept them, you drag them over, your mouse cursor changes and a green arrow appears showing where the upgrade will be positioned, and then you drop it.
Comments
pretty fun overall, the weapon testing mode is a nice addition
only thing i miss from it is to be able to reorder the modifiers u have in stock
Really fucking great!
Ended up with this monstrosity and got to 51 before I quit
Never bothered using a second gun, although I considered making a pure bullet breaker...
If there was a "combine all" button and/or sorting on the modifiers I would have, but it seemed like too much of a hassle so I just stopped paying attention to new mods I got.
It also seems like the lower-tier mods might be too good? This baby clocked in at 1,837 dps with bullets that flooded the screen then all tracked to whatever enemies were alive. I'd pre-flood the screen then kill every enemy within seconds, the guys who shot bullets on death being the only threat.
I'd specifically look at the balance of the costs, maybe making some of the low tiers cost more and high tiers cost less. But I only did this one run so maybe you can make even MORE broken shit with high-tier mods.
There could be better audiovisual feedback on enemy hits/kills. The "pop" sounds too... friendly? Some kind of quick bleepy explosion would be cool. And maybe flashing a color on hit. The explosion visual could also use a bit of work, it feels more like the enemies just pop out of existence than "exploding."
I don't like these kind of late game scenarios where the player basically gets too strong to lose and the game can never catch up. Some devs/players do, so you might not want this advice, but I think making enemy damage scale, or enemy health start scaling exponentially per wave would do the trick. Or both.
My game happens to be... remarkably similar, so you might be interested in ripping off some of my "support items" for some of your modifiers. I know I wrote "bullet shrapnel" and "bullet ricochet" in my notes after this session.
Also, great job on the fucking optimization dude, real nice
I personally use second gun to apply status effects, having different weapons for different enemies isn't working out that great so far.
Sorting and combine all sound reasonable, I'll probably implement them later.
Yeah, balance is a big issue. Right now it's too easy to just use a weapon that floods the screen with bullets, it become even easier compared to the previous version, cause minelayers' mines are no longer triggered by shots. I was going to add an enemy that reflects your bullets back at you, but it's turning out to be harder than expected. As for rarer modifiers, it's also a problem, cause you want to make them unusual, and leave boring +damage, +firerate, etc. for more common ones, but in the end it makes them more situational, while basic mods reliably boost your damage output.
And yes, you can make something broken using them, e.g: stacking Exp after Exp increases the amount of shrapnel exponentially, and can create a gun that deals thousand of damage with a single shot. Or putting Ho after Tra, which creates a gun that shoots bullets that shoot homing missiles...
I'm planning to make the game harder by tweaking existing enemies and introducing new ones, but balancing that is gonna be hard. And as I've said in the comment to your game, I don't like the idea of just increasing the enemy hp.
Anyway, thanks for a detailed comment.
Reached level 53 with my good old radiation build before getting distracted while watching TV and getting blown up by a bomb-ship cluster.
The UI feels more polished and the new enemy is nice, though I don't fully understand when it starts shooting. It is though as hell, thats for sure. The weapon testing is great, very welcome addition.
Later this week I will try to use the more advanced modifiers in my builds, for my run I didn't get any of them till round 20+ and at that point my build was fully online and replacing anything would have reduced its power.
Yeah, unfortunately, I didn't manage to add enemies that "punish" the player for shooting indiscriminately, but they're still in development, they will be in game.
Actually, that enemy has an X-shaped indicator(kind of similar to the laser eyes meme), which becomes brighter as the enemy is getting ready, but I guess it's not prominent enough.
Imo, the bullets inheriting the momentum of the ship is very hard to account for when aiming and moving. Aesthetics are nice.
The good thing is that bullets don't inherit any momentum by default, and only do so if you add speed upgrades, and even then it only becomes a problem if you add too many of them. So, if I were you, I would just exchange them for something else.
Having fun cheating with the reload-shot mechanic ;), please don't fix. Not sure if the upgrades are working, i drag them to the gun or crafting slots but nothing happnes(they dont 'stick' to the slots)
Oh, upgrading does work. You start dragging the upgrade, the slots turn white if they can accept them, you drag them over, your mouse cursor changes and a green arrow appears showing where the upgrade will be positioned, and then you drop it.
Tried again but this time on firefox and it works now. I was on chromium last time.
Changelog since last demo day: