Happy Wednesday! We've posted another weekly update to youtube, which you can see here:
It was a big week at Advanced Faffery! We did a little bit of everything, from adding a new energy system to replacing the HUD to adding a wide range of new adversaries. Here's a breakdown:
- We've got a prototype version of the energy system up and running - currently, an onboard battery is trickle-charged from a portable fusion reactor at a very low speed. Use of weapons, as well as use of sprinting, will draw down your current battery level. You can recharge by either picking up batteries or locating a charging pad (which will be randomly placed throughout the level). We've got lots of ideas on how to expand this system (toggleable lights that die if you're out of energy; a system for donating energy to fellow team members; an energy penalty for carrying too much weight, etc.), but from the attached footage, you can already see how that energy precarity activates the moment-to-moment gameplay.
- The new HUD gives a player a much better idea of both what they're carrying and whether they're close to a critically-slow level of encumbrance. While increased weight affects movement speed and jumping height, the impediment curve really takes a dive above 40kg. This not only creates opportunities for players to plan around parcel weights (as in the attached footage, where I had to deliver a 30kg minigun and was therefore mostly unable to carry anything else), but also gives us lots of area for growth in the outer loop. Store items will give the player new ways of managing and increasing parcel weight capacity.
- We added a number of new monster variants, and played quite a bit with spawn radii and spawn frequency. The new monsters include a spiky guy (covered in swords and hockey sticks, for some reason) who does more damage, a guy who wears a trashcan for a hat (takes more damage), and a couple of very fast tiny monsters, one of which seems to have found a helmet to wear. We're having a lot of fun designing and fighting these guys.
- We overhauled our dispatch assignment board so that players can now vote on the mission they want to do using colored magnets. We also now have an entire new tutorial area in our dispatch bay.
- We added damaging goo puddles to the level, creating some interesting navigational challenges - especially when access to a specific address becomes limited. Lots of interesting choices to make within the team about how to get cargo across some of these obstacles!
- We connected specific items with specific new parcel types (we'd been randomly assigning parcel types in the past), created a few new custom parcels (for example, the weapon boxes seen in the video), and the currently-carried parcels are now accurately shown on the back of each player.
- We worked more on our outer loop, adding new items to the postal store, including special shoes that reduce falling damage, special helmets that increase player durability, and lots of other fun stuff. We've got big plans for this area.
- Lots of bugs knocked out - items no longer hover in the air when their carrier dies, the player can now see their own body, held items are now positioned in a visible portion of the view frustum, and the spectator camera is now properly positioned on the helmet.
In the coming week, we'll be working on diversifying mission obstacles so that individual missions are more unique, digging a little more into character animation to improve actions like throwing (and, aspirationally, melee attacks), and outer loop improvements to get players motivated to get back into that dropship and earn some dough!
Thanks as always for your support, and see you next week!