Hello! You are currently reading one of my development blogs. I write these development blogs so that I can talk about my game, Solar War. (If you’re not here for Solar War, then something’s gone terribly wrong!)
This is the 6th development blog in a series that need not be read in any particular order. (Mostly because I don’t care.) This development blog will talk about difficulty options; there have been some major changes because I felt that 4 difficulty options were just a bit too lacking!
The New and Improved Difficulty
4 difficulty options are simply not enough! This clearcut and simple system (Relaxed, Standard, Challenge, and Insane Mode) leaves the potential for players to find one difficulty too easy and another too hard! This has to change!!!
Obviously, I needed to make a more intricate system; simple just isn’t my style! So, instead of pressing a difficulty option to start the game, the difficulty options get their own screen!
To start the game, you simply press that “Start Game!” button on the… game landing screen? I don’t really have a good name for that screen…
Over 70 trillion difficulty options!!!
You heard that right, there are over 70 trillion difficulty options.
Each one of these 12 difficulty sliders found on the previous screen can be adjusted independently from each other, leading to this absurd amount… There’s no way I can test them all, so there may be a few that are broken…
Don’t worry, the 4 initial difficulty modes won’t be going away, they’ll still be there. These modes are now “presets”, pressing them will set all of the sliders to be options that these game modes happened to set these sliders before, you just didn’t know about it. I may add an option to save more presets, however, that’ll be something that comes after 1.0.
These presets can be set beyond the values that Relaxed and Insane mode set them, leading to even harder or easier difficulties than was possible before. You can also set one slider to be easy and another to be hard… in case you didn’t figure that out from the two previous paragraphs.
Score Multipliers!
Well, you may be asking, how do all of these difficulty options reflect a “balanced” game experience?
Well, that’s where the score multiplier comes in! As it turns out, that “useless” thing in the demo that was always stuck to 1.0x now actually has a purpose!
The way it works is, each difficulty slider (on the difficulty page) will give a message on how easy or hard it will make the game. After some dark magic, you get a single number that reflects the estimated difficulty of the game. Higher values represent harder games, and lower values represent easier games.
The score multiplier is 1.0x when you set everything to Standard (using the Standard Mode preset), and is what you will get right out of the bag.
(Fun options may affect the score multiplier too, so Standard Mode may not be 1.0x if you have some fun options enabled.)
And a unified high score, as well
Why a score multiplier, though?
Well, as you may be able to tell, the “score multiplier” multiplies your score! But only at the end of the run. So your score may jump a significant amount when you die.
This score will be used to determine whether you got a high score. Which leads me to this point:
No longer will you have 4 separate high score databases! Now there will be only one, and everyone competes for the same scores! (Well, everyone on your machine, at least.) I’ll try to see that I can’t get them connected to your Steam profile, post-1.0.
The score multiplier will “adjust” your score based on the difficulty you have selected. Playing on a harder game mode for 5 minutes can now potentially compete with a player playing on an easier game mode for 3 hours!
Note, however, that the score multiplier may magically “decrease” if you play for less than around 16 minutes. (1000 seconds, technically.) This is to prevent players from abusing the initial ramp-up.
The score multiplier is designed to adjust scores so that scores reflect a person’s “capability” to play Solar War. I personally can achieve up to around 400,000 points; can you beat me?
Sorry, everyone, that’s it!
Looks like another “shorter” development blog… Well, “shorter” is relative. There’ll be one more, before the full release. Expect it around the 2nd week of March, and the full game, sometime after that.
Honestly, I’m running out of creative ways to try to “convince” people to follow Solar War and put it on their wishlist. Don’t you know how hard advertising is?
Until next time!
-Andrew