Triangle Biome Sneak Peek
In Survival mode, when players choose to continue past the "final" boss, they enter the end game loop where they will return to old biomes with stronger enemies and also encounter new, exotic biomes. The triangle biome is the first of these to be added: a mysterious place where triangles are sacred!
Unique themed loot drops in every exotic biome including weapons and weapon mods!
As with all new biomes, triangle biome themed Racing and Duel maps will be added to the lineup of maps in the game.
New Projectile System + Weapon Mods Revamp
Previously, weapons were either hitscan based (shots instantly hit targets in a straight line when fired) or projectile based (shots have a lifetime and can move with various forces like gravity). This led to a confusing split in weapon mods: some were hitscan only, some were projectile only.
Since I wanted a unified weapon mod system (where any mod could be placed on any kind of weapon, including grenades), all weapons were converted to be projectile based. With a bunch of tweaks and a completely rewritten projectile movement system, this approach actually ended up working nicely, and I was able to add a lot of new weapon mods that directly affect the movement characteristics of projectiles. This new system coupled with matching FX for each mod (projectile trails, sparks and more to help distinguish which mods are active) turned out to create some interesting results.
Since there are thousands of meaningful combinations of weapon mods and projectile types, I stumbled onto interesting and powerful synergies that had previously been unseen. This is exactly what I was hoping for when creating the weapon mod system: to let players mix and match different mods to create unique, surprising and overpowered versions of the core weapon archetypes.
Over 50 new weapon mods have been added this month, some reworked from older versions and others from the long list of ideas to add. Some examples:
- Glue Shot: Shots stick to enemies with a delayed explosion
- Chaotic Shot: Shots fly in a chaotic pattern but deal increased damage
- Homing Shot: Shots home towards nearby enemies
- Piercing Shot: Shots can pierce through (and damage) enemies multiple times without exploding
- Growing Shot: Shots get larger and deal more damage over time
- Wide Shot: Shots are wider horizontally
- Damage Aura: Shots have an AOE damage bubble around them
You can probably imagine some combinations that'd work well together from those examples already. The fun part is that the same combination of mods will look very different on each base weapon type (like the Claw Shotgun or the Coconut Launcher) so there's some strategy to work out what mix of mods will best suit your currently equipped weapon.
Some mods now have cooldowns as they are too powerful to be triggered every time a shot is fired. Cooldowns are most often seen on mods that are triggered when a shot "explodes" after hitting a surface or enemy as they usually have very powerful effects.
Some examples of mods with cooldowns:
- Spinning Blade: Shots spawn spinning blades that damage nearby enemies
- Shockwave: Shots spawn shockwaves that knock back nearby enemies
- Black Hole: Shots spawn black holes that suck nearby enemies in
- Scatter Shot: Shots multiply in the air and scatter into smaller shots
- Spikes: Shots spawn spikes when hitting surfaces
- Bombs: Shots spawn a bunch of rolling bombs when hitting surfaces
In addition to this, a bunch of new firing patterns have been added for weapons to fire in more interesting ways rather than just straight forward. Weapons can now fire groups of projectiles in many shapes such as arcs, circles, lines, triangles etc.
New Elimination FX
Enemies now explode into tiny crystal shards when eliminated. These examples are a bit over the top but it's fun to push the explosiveness of the effect to the max!
Duel Mode Revamp
I had never been fully happy with the gameplay loop in Duel mode: it felt a bit too basic and standard, a typical round based duel with no real interesting mechanics other than "you are a crab!".
With all of the weapon mod changes mentioned above (and the huge chunk of time it takes to properly implement and test each mod), a big change was made to the codebase to allow for weapon mods in Duel mode. With that, the rules have been changed to make the mode much more unique.
At the start of the first round, all players pick a weapon out of a random selection of 3 (all players get the same random selection).
At the start of all future rounds, players are offered a weapon mod out of a random selection of 3. This means that as the match goes on, players will become more and more powerful with a growing list of mods affecting each shot that they fire.
The losing players of each round will have their health doubled.
The players that reach the score limit first win the match!
In my early tests, this has created a much more dynamic and varied Duel experience, with no two matches turning out the same way. Players might make similar choices leading to a close fight, or completely different choices leading to chaotic battles being won or lost in sometimes unbelievable ways!
Other Changes
- Tony's Evil Brother: Word has it that Tony's evil brother has stolen some of his goods and is selling them at discounted rates!
- Survival Enemies Using Weapons With Mods: Thanks to the codebase changes mentioned above, Survival enemies can now make use of weapon mods: this is the perfect way to spice up late game enemies with unpredictable combinations of mods on weapons that they usually fire (stay clear of enemies firing chaotic shotguns!).
- Movement Speed And Scale Tweaks The world has been scaled down with enemy size and speed also tweaked to match: teammates are now much more visible and this also makes Duel matches more fair as it's much easier to target enemies.
- Hazards: Hazards now have a small chance to spawn on any Survival map, adding chaos for both you and enemies!
- Resolution Quality Setting Added: This allows players to improve performance issues by lowering the quality of the game resolution. It also can be raised up to 200% for those that want it.
- Target Dummies: Target dummies have been added to all shops in Survival mode for players to easily test out new build options.
Modular Weapons Idea
As the weapon mod system is probably the biggest part of the game in terms of replay value and fun, I explored many different ideas before locking down the current system for the beta release. One of these ideas was a completely modular weapon system which allowed players to mix and match various parts to build unique and interesting weapons. Players would always start with the same basic pistol but build up to a much more powerful modular weapon as the run went on. While this idea sounded great on paper, when I implemented the prototype it ended up with a few shortcomings that ended up feeling worse than what I had before, mainly that it's not fun to find weapon parts that all look similar and then have to (sometimes tediously) put them together in a game that is mainly about fast paced action.
There are some things I'd love to explore more from this idea but it's more important to get this beta out, so that takes priority for now.
Thanks for reading!
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