I am back to working on the hard to define task of "game feel". This involves making the things you do over and over feel… good.
One of my main playtesters is a friend I've known since 1st grade. I've played every generation of video game with him. We've been comrades in arms in n64 goldeneye, being repeatedly gunned down by his older brother, I think we actually got into a fight one time over Tekken3 or maybe some Dreamcast boxing game, and we've shut down entire battlefield servers as helicopter pilot & copilot.
So when I send him a build, I can easily tell if it "feels good" or not. The last time he played, it was clear something was missing from the minigun. He sent me back a gif from Blackhawk Down and said "this is how I want to feel". Alright. Mission accepted.
Game feel is more of an art than a science... The best way to improve it is just to experiment with a bunch of things.
So let's get our paint out and Bob Ross this minigun, shall we?
lol I am getting SNES controller vibes from that paint palette
Making the minigun feel more powerful
The Before
Looking back at this gif it's hard to tell I'm shooting. And yes this was an older build with a different camera view.
Screen shake + Barrel Flash Effects
Screen shake is a common game feel tweak- you make the camera move slightly in reaction to powerful events in the game scene.
So much better already. even without audio it's clear when you're shooting.
Thankfully the asset we're using for camera work (Cinemachine) has a nice system for adding screenshake impulses to events. All we have to do is define the rotation + position waves that shake the camera.
As you can see, the camera shake involves 3 different frequencies rotating on the 3 separate axes. This gives a good shake effect that feels natural without having a weird oscillation in only one direction.
I decided not to use any position shake, since that tends to be more jarring than rotation.
Splash Damage + Spread
Part of the issue I wanted to fix was how lame it felt when you shot right next to an enemy, and nothing happened. The easy improvement here was to add splash damage to the rounds. So now when a shot impacts a surface, it tries to add damage directly to what it hit, and then uses the existing splash damage system to add damage to anything in a 2 meter radius around it.
The other part of this was that the rounds would go EXACTLY where you were aiming. This sounds like a good thing, but it looked and felt strange. So I added an angle of spread that can be adjusted
Better Tracers
Ok I have to admit something. Before now the tracers didn't actually go where the bullets were hitting. Forgive me. It was good enough at the time but not good enough anymore. Even worse, they would go through surfaces that stopped the bullets. This irritated me for awhile and I was so happy to fix it.
Now the tracers actually follow the path of the bullets, and stop where the bullets stopped. This means the spread of the minigun is directly visible in your tracers.
Aiming Parallel
Previously both miniguns (left and right) would aim towards a single point.
By keeping them parallel, you increase the actual area covered by their shots, and I think it just looks better too.
I also improved the look of the lasers which designate their aim, and added small laser dots to the end. This makes it clear to the player where the shots will land, if they're blocked by an object, and it responds slightly to changes in the helicopters angle.
Before
After
NPCs are now scared of your bullets
Another way to make something feel powerful, is to make the NPCs afraid of it!
This took an entire rewrite of the NPC AI. Which was on my list for a long time and this was reason enough to do it. More on this next time, it will probably be the topic of the next devlog.
Each NPC has sensors that it can use to make decisions about what state to be in. If they see or hear a shot near them, and don't see a current target, they will run away. This uses a common method of adding AI Stimulations or "Stims" to the world that each NPC can choose to react to.
A fun bug that exists currently: The NPCs don't differentiate between their own shots and their enemies shots. So they can essentially shoot and then startle themselves, and run away. I'm working on a fix to give them a bit more courage.
More Bass
The minigun sound effect doesn't have much in the low frequencies, and it's hard to really distinctly feel when the individual rounds are being fired. I experimented with adding a small bass pop when the gun actually fires each bullet. It's subtle, but it feels a lot better.
I don't have a gif for this. ;)
Recoil
This one is subtle... I wonder if you noticed it in the above gifs? The minigun has a bit of recoil that it exerts onto the helicopter when firing. Notice how in the before gif, the helicopter is totally stationary, but in the other gifs it's moving slightly backwards.
I think I will use this more for the minigun upgrades in the game. If you unlock a more powerful gun, it might have higher recoil.
In Summary
happy bob ross with trees for hair is a vibe
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