Hi all, its been a long time. What originally started out as a project to improve the onboarding process, turned into a whole lot more.
The ultimate goal became about trying to get what already existed into its final form and as a result there have been quite a lot of changes/improvements. To list them all in their normal format would be quite long so instead I'm just going to provide an overview below of what has been done for the latest update.
Visual Update
Pretty much every asset in the game has been reviewed and has either been updated or changed. This includes the tileset used to make the levels. A large part of the visual improvement comes from adding some depth to the top down view using shading and highlighting. This basically meant redrawing all the maps again which has been done.
Another part of the visual update was ensuring the UI was standardised across the board. Some of the UI has also had to be changed due to trying to improve the accessibility options.
A new camera has been created to manage the views in the game to get a more standardised view across different resolutions. This means that those sitting at a monitor and those sitting across the room from a TV should still see the same things. This has also made the text more legible for those further away.
I've also added an option to adjust the GUI/Text size so those who would like a larger text format can up the scale a little.
Story Refresh and Onboarding
The existing story has had another pass to ensure that its consistent and doing everything I need it to do. There have been some minor changes to the overall story but mostly its about creating a better onboarding process.
When first starting the game now you no longer have access to all the additional 'Apps' straightaway. As you complete campaign assignments, they unlock. This means for instance, that you cannot alter or design your own towers until after the 3rd assignment.
Both the Quick-Start guide and Interactive Tutorial have been updated and improved, plus there are some additional articles in the Academy app.
As a result of both the visual and story update, a number of maps (mainly the early ones) have had their layouts and scripted elements altered.
Quality of Life Improvements
There are a whole host of these ranging from small things like muting and pausing the game when you alt-tab to much larger ones like notifications around the edge of the screen to show you when something is damaged outside your view. The list is long but I would like to highlight a few.
Active paths now have pulses that run along the edge of them so that you know which routes are in use. The pulses move in the direction of travel. The same pulses are used to show flight paths too, so there's less guess work involved in where the flying bots are going.
I've added a slight delay between dialogue messages so that they cannot be accidentally skipped. If you do miss something or want to go over a dialogue again when on an Assignment, you can do so by going into AIDA's menu and selecting 'Last VT'.
Towers have had a visual update but they too have also had a some QoL improvements. With the ability to create whatever towers you want, including how you want them to look, its always been difficult to give the player at a glance readability of its function. I personally use certain sprites to represent certain functions and coupled with the tooltips they have, I originally thought this would be enough. However I've now tried to take it a step further and to improve its at a glance readability I have applied colourisation to both the base and top half of the towers. This has meant that the colour no longer represents the level of the tower, which is now done by the number of purple pips above the tower.
The colours are now as follows:-
The base represents damage type
- Grey = Physical
- Green = Biological
- Blue = EM
- Yellow = Explosive
- Red = Thermal
The top represents the projectile type being used.
- Grey = Bullet
- Green = Mist
- Blue = Lightning
- Yellow = Missle
- Red = Laser
Other Mentions
A couple of other things worth mentioning before concluding this lengthy post.
The Enemy Director has been optimised and has greater structure over the enemy bots that are spawned. Common Bots will form the main bulk of the army now with Specials being intermingled in a more useful way than before. Their timings as to when they can come into play has now been properly implemented. Specials will no longer appear before Alert Level 5 and Flying bots will not appear before 8.
Common Bots
Grunt, Lightning, Tank, Swarmer, Shielded, Heavy.
Special Bots
Booster, Shielder, Cloaker, Healer, Disrupter, Dismantler.
Flying Bots
Drone, Horde, Swift, Crusher.
One new support tower type has been added to the game. This gives a tower the ability to draw fire i.e. enemies that shoot will shoot at this first if its in range. In MMO parlance, a 'taunt'. This allows some new tower ideas to be spawned around having this tank take the brunt of the fire while you reduce the cost of your other towers by reducing their HP, for instance. I'm sure you guys can come up with some other ideas.
Before I sign off I want to say that I will be resuming more regular updates again. This includes the remaining 4 maps for the campaign. Map 12 should be live in the next 3 weeks.
Thanks all.