Health Pick Ups
After playing uncountable number of versus matches, I noticed a pattern after playing hundreds of multiplayer matches (against bots)… it is near impossible to create long kill-streaks. This is mainly due to the limited non-regenerating health every character has. So I had two options in this case: either create a health system that regenerates when the player takes no damage, or create a healing ability. I decided to go with the latter.
In this case, there are various health packs scattered across a level that a player can go to and heal themselves at. To stop spamming, the health pack disappears and re-appears after a while.
So far, it has allowed me to get much bigger kill streaks and it has not modified the core-gameplay loop, which I am happy with.
Ammo Pick Ups
Similar reasons to me creating the health pickups. Players struggle to get large killstreaks due to the limited ammo every weapon has. So I had another two options in this case: either create weapons with more weapons or create a reloading ability. I decided to go with the latter.
Similar to health pickups, players can find ammo pickups scattered across the level that they can go to reload their weapon at.
The combination of health and ammo pickups feels right, like it should have been designed since the beginning of the project. But you learn things as the project goes on, like what needs to be modified or added to make the gameplay loop feel good.
Aiming
This was a big one. I noticed aiming issues coming up over time and thought it’s better to fix this sooner than pushing it back and fixing it later. I think I have fixed it, I still am not 100% sure about that or what even was causing it in the first place.
One of my fixes was calculating shots from a fixed height, instead of calculating it dynamically from the muzzle position. The muzzle position always moves because the animations it plays. This meant sometimes the shot calculation came from a different height 1 frame than to the next.
Another fix was rotating the character’s middle spine to face the shot constantly, to make sure the weapon sways less while the character moves. You can see that from the GIF on how less the weapon sways while it is moving around.
Summary
I planned to finish challenge mode, horde mode, and singleplayer mode this month, but I pushed them all back. I was struggling to make them work without knowing what will be in the levels in those specific game modes. Instead, I will create the code for those game modes when I start creating the levels for them, which should make it much easier for myself.
Instead, I focused on updating and fixing the gameplay-loop issues, and fixing a serious bug with the aiming.
It does not feel like I got much done this month, and next month does not look much better. This is mainly due to the holidays and me taking some time off to relax and play some games. The good thing is that code-wise, TACTICAL BANDITS is getting quite close to complete. This means after next month, I will be focusing solely on creating content for the game.