Day 11

Done today

• Energy consumed and heat generated on attachment/weapon usage.
• Health and shield gauges flashing in the HUD when damage is received.

Change of plans

Even though I planned on working on new weapons today, I decided to enjoy my pre-(Canadian)Thanksgiving Sunday, and work a little less than usual. As such, instead of creating and testing new weapons, I went for simple-enough mechanics and UI changes.

Energy and heat management

Each attachment (only weapons for now) can use energy and generate heat. If there is not enough energy available, the attachment group cannot be activated/fired. Energy regenerates and heat dissipates with time. For now, overheating does nothing, except pushing the gauge to its limits in the UI, but I plan for some kind of automatic shutdown when a certain (configurable) threshold is reached, and death if reaching the maximum heat (the war machine explodes). It will be up to the player to configure where they want the automatic shutdown to occur. Too soon, and the war machine is always in cooldown mode, but too late and it’s “game over, man, game over!”. That will be one more interesting customization dynamic, I think.

What’s next?

Tomorrow, I plan to work on the following:

• New weapon types (maybe for real, this time…?).