This month’s development was 1 step forward and 2 steps backward.
I started the month by finish setting up the final few weapons and creating new editor scripts to make level creation much easier and faster. And the changes helped, as I managed to create 5 levels in 2 days. These levels were an introduction to the game, so they were designed to be simple and easy to complete and introduce players to the controls of the game.
The levels worked great and did their job, but it showed a flaw in the core game design of the game, which was the game is boring. It was all about getting a perfect run, and one mistake meant it was game over. This felt too punishing even for me. The game camera also meant the levels could only be designed in a certain way so that they did not block the view of the player. I did have a feature planned for the game where the player could go up alleyways so the levels expand further out, but I feel this would be just a plaster to fix a major game issue.
I also got some feedback from other developers that they were not a fan of the art style of the levels. I was, but since this game isn’t for me, I decided I should change it.
So the second half of the month, I updated the game camera and the level art style of TACTICAL BANDITS to… how it was in the long way. The level art style was praised in the long way, and the game camera allows me to create much better and exciting levels.
The funny thing is that TACTICAL BANDITS was built from the source of the long way, and now it has come full circle where the long way’s source is being put back into TACTICAL BANDITS. Maybe this is a way that the long way still lives in some form or shape.
Anyway, for next month I am planning to update some features and mechanics (health, pathfinding, shooting) so that they work better with the core gameplay loop. I am then going to continue working on creating new levels and hopefully have some marketing material out.