22 APR 2020:
- Scrapped the idea of enemy ships stealing power-up icons. Enemy ships snag the power-ups too quickly meaning the player would rarely get to use different weapons. Instead, enemy ships will get upgraded based on other conditions.
If there's one thing I've learned in this gamedev journey, it's that there are no perfect plans on paper. You could spend a week drafting up "the way it's going to be" and then three weeks into development you realize that some of those ideas you had for your game need to be scrapped. Maybe they increase loading times too much, maybe they're too hard to code, or maybe feedback from testers is making you rethink things.
- Simplified some of the game logic. Previously I had it where both the enemy and player ships could have missed shots. Though it adds some "realism" to the game, I think it's more likely to be frustrating. For the player, any shots that graze an enemy will deal normal damage and any shots that hit the central "hitbox" will deal extra damage.
- Adjusted the layers of the enemy ships. Larger cruisers will always be in the background, medium-sized ships will be in the middle-ground and even smaller ships will be in the foreground. This ensures that no ships can hide behind another.