Hey everyone,
We’ve mentioned that Loaders features a fully destructible environment and if you’ve been around games long enough, you’ve probably heard that before 🙂
First we need to go into some details about the tech (tech part)
The tech behind our terrain system allows players to destroy the ground, reshape the environment, and open new paths. That’s a big part of Loaders’ identity.
But early on, we noticed a problem like being able to make it impossible to get out of without spending 5 minutes digging your way back up by creating a slope that takes a lot longer than making the hole in the first place. During that time, you’re being shot at. Not a fun experience.
So we had to tweak the stats of the explosion and digging modules to ensure the ground would create natural slopes, which meant also less digging in the ground. Now, when shooting in the ground and starting digging, it creates natural slopes instead of deep pits. It’s a small trade-off to keep the pacing fun and the gameplay fair.
What about structures?
Walls and constructions were a different story. These would rarely be used as ground and if so, only for bridges, so easy to finish the hole to fall through if need be. No stuck situations with that, so no reason to limit the destructive power here. Right? Right…
Unfortunately, we tried with lots of massive explosions and piercing walls. To the point where each weapon could either destroy the wall entirely or punch through it and start hitting the enemies on the other side. In a 10vs10 battle, hiding behind a hole just meant you’d be safe until someone either detects you or decides to shoot through that wall. Covers offered no cover anymore.
So we rebalanced the weapons:
One can still punch through a wall,
One causes damage but not total destruction,
One (the most precise gun we have ) is precise, and only chips away at a surface.
We’ve spent a lot of time working on the level design to accommodate the tech in order to make the fully destructible terrain feature shine as much as possible and give you some “haha” moments where destroying a part of the terrain offers you a tactical edge on the enemy team.
That part is still very much a work-in-progress. We’re tweaking, testing, and adjusting things constantly.
We hope you enjoyed reading this devblog and are excited to discover more about the game and its development process.
There’s still so much we want to share with you, so thanks for being part of this adventure and don’t forget to wishlist the game and invite friends to play with you if you want to support us!
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Load up again, Loader!
The Tower Five Team