We need more power!
In the previous blog post we talked about the amount of enemies that can be present at the same time in the game. As we explained, it came from the fact that the new Unity DOTS framework enables new levels of performance and thus we could have this amount of enemies. But every action has an equal and opposite reaction, how is the player supposed to handle all these enemies? The weapons are by necessity very powerful and effective.
The technical aspect
Powerful weapons have their own performance implications, it’s not trivial to handle a shotgun discharge with 80 individual bullets (pellets). Just spawning 80 bullets is not a big deal, but then there are all the individual hits and calculations following that, which sort of expands into a host of different systems that all need to crunch all the aspects of every single bullet and it’s behavior. And then you need to multiply this by 4 players in co-op. So while the decision to have these powerful weapons came as a result of the amount of enemies, it’s made easier to manage with the DOTS framework.
Power when needed
To make the weapon power more interesting, we decided to make it adjustable. So most weapons have a power level that can be adjusted in real time with the scroll wheel. The available levels are 0, 50, 100, 150 and 200%. In the case with our shotgun when using it with 100% power, it behaves like a normal shotgun, maybe a slightly more powerful shotgun. Then more power will increase the spread and amount of bullets in every discharge. In close quarters with lots of enemies, this is highly effective! And when the power is reduced it has less spread and less bullets come out of the barrel. On 0% it does nothing at all, because why not?
Watch on YouTube
Demonstration of the power levels
Is that balanced?
The power also has negative consequences. First of all, the recoil of all ballistic weapons are increased quite a bit when used with higher than 100% power. This means that you will not be able to keep a good aim though a couple of fast 200% discharges, the crosshair just flies up in the sky. But with some practice and skill, the weapons are much more effective on high levels of power. The other part of the balancing is the durability of the weapons, all weapons will eventually break when they are used enough. And the higher power, the faster the weapons will break. This is where a lot of finesse with how you use the weapons can help a great deal, knowing to use 200% and when 50% is better, that is the pro-gamer move!
Watch on YouTube
The power is really useful
This is hopefully a quite satisfying feeling.
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/ The Knackelibang Team