Well hey, much of the gameplay tweaking is thanks to your feedback, so give yourself a big ol' pat on the back.
So I finished the game on Normal, and it's great! It took a few tries, but that's expected - it made it seem a lot like the arcade shooters of yesteryear, where you have to play it until you master it, but the upgrade system means that mastering earlier levels gives you a major advantage in later ones. Well, I said this already! Anyway, it works great and seems pretty much balanced.
Excellent, proper balance has been a pain in the arse to attain, so i'm glad it's finally pretty okay.
I didn't see any real difference as far as the one-hit enemies are concerned, but thanks to the improved and more affordable Sensor Upgrade, they were much less frustrating to deal with anyway. I like that the Sensor Upgrade becomes available at around the time that the red wedges show up if you're building defense from the start, while if you max out offense and then start building defense, it becomes available right around the time the Leviathans start becoming a threat. So that's perfect.
Yeah, Leviathans are still extremely dangerous on Normal and above, but they're no longer a
guaranteed instakill if you don't have Very Tough. On Easy and baby mode, they don't deal enough damage to kill you from full health now, which i hope will make those difficulties appropriately non-difficult in the end game. The sensor upgrade being timed so neatly was actually completely inadvertently, but it does seem pretty fitting now. Offensive players will have a power advantage, but will have to deal with red wedges on reaction. :V
The red Leviathans at the final boss occasionally didn't give alerts before appearing, this might be a bug? Didn't give me much trouble though.
Is it when they spawn initially? Because i know they don't give warnings when spawning; the way they work just doesn't lend itself well to that. Could also be that it somehow got hidden behind the health bar, which obscures the area where the warning sprite would normally show. I'll give it a check, but i can't guarantee that i can be arsed to update the game for it. :V
The bosses might be improved on by reducing their attack power and increasing their HP. They are very fast and unpredictable, and if you don't have their patterns down already they can easily kill you multiple times before you even figure out what's going on. This might prove to be a problem for new players now that lives are a thing, since they might not get enough tries right away to figure out the pattern. On the other hand, finally learning the pattern and beating the bosses can feel like a much bigger accomplishment.
Yeah, this has also been something i've been thinking about, some of the bosses can be beaten in 5-10 seconds (the final boss being the exception, since i'm pretty sure all of its phases individually have more health than the three other bosses combined). I deliberately made them very fast paced because i personally dislike damage sponge bosses with slow and easily avoidable attacks, but it's entirely possible that i went too far in the opposite direction, with bosses that basically turn into a frantic DPS race. I'm afraid i'm not interested in changing them, however, since i want to move on from this game once the bugs are ironed out. :v
(Honestly, the final boss seems like the easiest boss in the game. All the others are skill and experience gates that are vastly more difficult than anything that came before them and pretty much ensure that you have the requisite upgrades, but if you can make it through level 19 the last boss is a walk in the park by comparison).
I feel like it's actually the hardest one in spite of the slower pace, but that might also be because i've beaten the three former ones too many times to count by now. It's especially nasty on Nightmare, where its numerous large shots pile on a TON of damage, to the point where i had to cap the final phases rate of fire. That barrage was just too difficult to dodge.
Other than that, as far as gameplay is concerned ALS seems pretty much perfect. The only thing left to add is polish. Adding some different backgrounds as you progress through the game would be cool. Maybe a story?
Excellent, once again, thanks very much for your input! As mentioned above though, i don't feel for adding more to this game now, the code from years ago is
clunky as fuck and i kinda want to move on so i won't ever have to deal with those drag-and-drop monstrosities again. I did originally have a token story in mind, but ended up scrapping that, partly because my artistic skills were too lacking at the time. Could probably do it today, but eh, maybe in 2.0. As for the backgrounds, that's why i coded the galaxy thing, so while it's the same
type of background, it at least looks different every time. Can't be arsed to make those by hand. :V
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Topic: Angry Laser Space - v1.1 is a go! (a game by Shook and Chartle) (Read 57804 times)