Door Colliders
One of the most difficult design decisions in games... doors!! TACTICAL BANDITS had doors in the game for a long time, and we even tried to fix it last month. Turns out the fix did not fix it much, as players will still getting stuck while trying to walk through doors. The fix did help the AI understand how to use doors.
So to ensure that players have the same understanding of doors as the AI, we decided to remove the colliders for them when they are open. This means that players can walk through open doors with much ease.
This does ruin the immersion of the game, but the improvements to the gameplay makes this a worthy tradeoff. Hopefully this will be the last time we have to fix the doors.
Kill Cam
One thing we noticed in Versus (previously called Multiplayer) game modes is that players could not tell who had won when the game was over. The game did go into slow motion but the camera did not focus on the final kill and/or killer's location on the screen. We have changed that now that it does both, which makes it much faster to understand who has won the match.
Captured Humans
Something that was on the To Do list for over six months, but we have finally updated the animations for captured civilians in the game. Now it's easier to visualize who is captured and who is cowering because of everything that is happening around them.
Main Menu Dioramas
On-screen dioramas have been added to the main menu. This makes it much more enjoyable looking at that menu instead of static logo text. Watch out for special dioramas that will showcase during holiday seasons!
Updated Tutorial
The tutorial has been slightly updated to separate the sneaking and killing part. Previously, the tutorial taught the player to first distract the guard and then kill him with the baseball bat. From testing, we found players found this difficult and usually died there.
To make it simpler, the player is now given a baseball bat that they can immediately use on a guard not facing them. This should give the player understanding on how to kill someone in close-combat and give them confidence to distract and kill the next guard.
Challenge Mode
All of the challenge game modes have been created. We have decided to release the first five challenge game modes now for the early testers, with the latter five releasing in a few weeks.
The goal in challenges is to complete it as fast as possible. There are only a limited amount of weapons, ammo boxes, and med kits available on each challenge level. Players will have to master the level to beat the target times to then unlock the next challenge. There are a total of five different types of challenges in the games, which should keep all types of players entertained.
Assault is about killing all of the enemies on a level as fast as possible.
Wave Defense is about surviving a number of waves coming to kill the player.
Elimination is all about killing one specific character as fast as possible.
Stealth is about sneaking through a level to the exit as fast as possible.
Protect is about rescuing a captured civilian and taking them to the exit.
Next Showcase
In our previous monthly update, we mentioned we would be showcasing TACTICAL BANDITS at another event very soon. Well that event was the Steam Next Fest, which we had to unfortunately pull out off. This is because we decided to spend the time on continuing the development of the game instead of focusing on the demo build.
Instead, we will be showcasing TACTICAL BANDITS at Steam Next Fest in 2024, which will be when the game development is complete and we can focus on creating a demo build without it affecting the progress of TACTICAL BANDITS. The next Steam Next Fest will also be closer to the release date of the game, which is much better for marketing.
Summary
Another busy month, another month closer to finishing the development of TACTICAL BANDITS. With challenge game modes now complete and just being tested, we can go back to focusing on the development of singleplayer mode. Singleplayer mode is close to completion as well, but its balancing will take longer as it involves multiple levels.
Apart from singleplayer mode, we will also be testing the progress system in the game and ensuring that players unlock new features at a good pace without having to grind or being given a handout.
We are happy with the progress made this month, and without the distraction of the upcoming Steam Next Fest, it gives us a chance to focus solely on developing and completing the game. Our goal in the next month is to have all game modes working from beginning to end. This will then allow us to focus on bug fixes, balancing, and ensuring the game modes are fun to play.