Hello folks!
Thanks for your patience the last few weeks, it's been a very busy time for me. I'm developing this whilst juggling other jobs, so doing these writeups requires a moment of quiet. Without further ado, lets get stuck in!
I've had a big push for the 24th of last month to get a version of the game that is effectively feature complete and ready for playtesting, something that I've successfully achieved. There's been a substantial number of additions, here are some of the things I've added:
+ Cruisers: These were great fun to implement, first pass involved adjusting the graphics I previously had for the Cruiser, as they were too far removed from the rest of the ships. Second task was differentiating it enough from the Dreadnought and Minesweeper. Minesweepers now attack at higher speed at close range, Dreadnoughts do high damage at very long range, the Cruiser sits between the two as a mid ranged ship that fires a volley of two artillery shells per salvo. The Cruiser is heavily armoured, numerous and explode violently when destroyed. The game really kicks up a notch once they enter the fray. Only tweak is there's maybe too many of them at the moment, so I'll be decreasing their frequency slightly to not overload the player, particularly on the higher levels.
+ Achievements: MORSE now has over 20 different achievements to unlock, testing speed, accuracy and ability to beat the game with different keys! Adds a nice cumulative feel to the game and gives players some extra challenges beyond the campaign.
+ Umlauts and Dynamic help sheet! In keeping with the presence of German, MORSE now features Umlauts (ä, ö, ü) which are different German letters that have their own Morse variants:
1. Ä: .-.-
2. Ö ---.
3. Ü ..--
These throw a little bit of variance in there and mean German words can be accommodated. Leading on from this feature, the help sheet will update based on if your coordinates get scrambled, avoiding situations where you don't know the grid you need to move to (because it's off screen).
+ Skirmish Mode: As you might remember, the game previously was just randomised words for the maps rather than a "Campaign" of curated ones, so I re-added that mode in for people to experiment/practice with. After playing the Campaign over and over again in playtesting, it's refreshing to beat a bunch of new levels/words again. The start menu has been updated to add an additional option to alternate easily between the modes and leaves the door open to more mode types being added.
+ More tutorials and expansion of manual: Through playtesting, it became clear that elements of the game weren't explained in depth enough for players to grasp, so I've added a dedicated tutorial explaining the receiver and I've added some supporting tutorial images/text for explaining submarine functionality. I've expanded the enemy sections in the manual and added new areas such as ARDF and BOTA, I hope that it's going to be a growing document with more updates.
+ Campaign Implemented: Very excited to confirm that the bulk of work to add a Campaign for the game has been implemented! Given the narrative richness of the UKGF version of the game, I wanted there to be some narrative grounding for the setting, though doing it in a way that didn't bloat scope. In summary, each mission starts with a Naval Signal giving you some narrative that ties to the word you're using in gameplay. For example in the image above.
The format uses Naval Signals, which include a location, time, who it's from, date and message, all of which gives subtle bits of worldbuilding. The waves play out over the course of a midnight raid of the Kaiser's fleet and I've tied the widening of the grid to an increasing breach in the naval blockade. What I'm particularly pleased with is I've used a black highlight for the word that's being used in the grid so you know what you're in for.
All in all, it's a simple enough implementation that adds a sprinkle of narrative and ties the plot to the words in the level like the previous version. To give the levels more of a distinct form to them, I've added a "Blackout" mode to the Campaign with limited visibility (mirroring the expert mode) and made the spawning more curated. Find out more below:
+ Blackout: On expert mode, the game is played in "Blackout", meaning enemy ships unless directly hit will remain hidden, decreasing your visibility. The problem I had was how to visualise the mode change, so the grid is now blacked out, the fog of war significantly further forward and the letter colours flipped, which differentiates it from the regular mode. In the Campaign, this mode is also added in intervals to mix up combat and provide extra tension.
+ Spawning refinement: Previously, MORSE would throw every ship unlocked by that point at you, which got a bit repetitive and challenging towards the end of the campaign, so I added some logic that means you're much more likely to get certain ships on certain maps. This worked well as it ties the narrative and word choice in with the enemy spawning, makes the game feel more cohesive and a bit easier to predict in the Campaign (and plan accordingly).
I've also spread the ship spawning out a bit more, adding logic to limit bunching of ships. Further, the ships previously had a currency associated with them (1-5) to take from the spawn budget, the budget increases with each successive wave. I've increased the values for the high end ships to balance out the distribution of enemies. It's dropped the number of enemies but means you're not getting an unbeatable concentration of enemies at once.
+ Accuracy Scale Overhaul, Enhanced Upgrades and Accuracy Threshold: I've taken a hatchet to the accuracy scale, previously it was far too punitive where if you missed ONE shot, you'd lose your "combo" fully, which with the multi-shot shell types was a point of frustration that came up again and again in the feedback. So, this is what's changed:
The scale does decrease when you miss, but the amount it decreases starts low and rises with each successive missed hit. Means the odd miss won't hurt too bad, but fully missing with a salvo you're punished for. This allows players to shoot in the dark more without feeling like they're going to be punished for trying to do reconnaissance.
There is however now motivation to avoid missing where possible: Accuracy Threshold checks if you manage to maintain a level of accuracy above a certain amount, giving you both faster reload (as was the case before) but also unlocking more powerful upgrades. This means you can be a bit a more tactical with your choice of upgrade, sometimes it'll be better to let the scale sit below the threshold to unlock basics whilst otherwise you'll want to unlock the most powerful stuff.
As for what I have left to do:
- Balancing: I can beat MORSE, but after a recent playtest it's clear that the skill curve is too steep with too much introduced between waves. Having too much substance isn't a bad thing necessarily, but I need to do some further refinement to smoothen out that curve. This will most likely mean reducing the wave "Budget" increase and spreading it across more waves, I'm thinking 20 would be sufficient. Cruisers currently are too much of a dominant force so I'll be dialling them back and certain levels have huge difficulty spikes, hopefully there's enough time to get these all ironed out.
- Full Save Function: I was particularly dreading implementing the save function for this game, mainly because there's so many interconnected systems that it could play havoc with. Thankfully I have been able to get everything reliably loading/saving achievements and unlocks, but full save functionality remains a major task. The core 3 things that need sorting:
Preserving upgrades: If a player quits the game and rejoins, their upgrade stats should be retained, such as shell type unlocks.
Mine spawning: This is definitely the biggest of the 3 tasks: Storing the mines in several lists with 3 data points; upgrade level and X and Y position and making sure they reliably spawn in on load.
Maintaining consistency: General rigor to make sure that level sequences load correctly, such as the state, word choice and grid length.
- Finish implementing achievements: The achievements should (hopefully) be easy to implement, just a case of getting on with it and making sure they strike the balance of ambitious whilst not being too challenging.
- Steamdeck Compatibility: I really need to get MORSE so the controller loads automatically with the handset, just a bunch of admin faff but hopefully can be figured out in time, the game feels a really good fit on handheld.
- Playtesting: I'm going to be doing some last minute playtesting with various groups to really nail down last issues.
All in all, I'm very excited that the project is coming close to being done, it's bee a long time coming with the project but it's almost over the line, it's going to be great to see what people think of the game.
Finally, I just wanted to say how excited I was to see MORSE featured on the "Ham Radio Crash Course" afterchat, it's exciting to see the game slowly finding its place in the ham radio community!
That's all for now, stay tuned for more soon, got some more fun things coming down the pipe.
73, Alex