v0.1.6 Update - Asteroids & Spawn Rate Tuning!

First and foremost, here's my v0.1.5 high score:

There was a point in the pre-EA prototype life of this game where I had the difficulty and spawn rate tuned really well for certain ships - I had put up a high score of like 30,000 (thanks to a high hit combo multiplier and a ridiculously valuable asteroid) and the difficulty and spawn rates felt like they scaled really well as time went on in the session. But it was only for certain ship stat values and it was more variable than I would have liked - some levels felt completely overwhelming and unfair and others were boring and empty.

So I scrapped a bunch of the code dealing with spawn rate and difficulty and focused on getting the enemy ships and asteroids tuned in so they at least had appropriate stats. I never got around to revisiting the spawn rate code though...

... until now! It was bothering me enough during some testing of the other change in this update (asteroid momentum stuff, woah!!!) that I figured I'd go in and fix it.

I'm really happy with how things scale now - it actually feels viable to play high-value ships again for the first time in a long time. Ridiculous builds with 10+ values in all 4 stats will probably still be pretty unplayable (although I haven't tested that yet, so maybe not) but for the most part there's a ramp up in difficulty as you approach the high score, with some occasional "waves", and then a nice ebb and flow from there as you set a new high score and push it higher and higher. The further you push the high score after setting a new one, the more objects will start to spawn in over time.

I'll do some more significant testing soon - but in my early play, 0.1.6 has been really fun to fly in and I hope others agree. The asteroids doing little momentum and rotation transfers has been a lot of fun to dial in, too - I think maybe another slight buff to their starting hull values might be in order so that they stick around long enough to become chaotic at higher difficulties.

The full change log is below my high score from testing 0.1.6:

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Change Log - DRONE SMUGGLER v0.1.6 Early Access - Asteroids & Spawn Rate Tuning

Fixes

• None

Changes

• Made changes to the space object spawn rate to make higher value ships more viable - prior to this, most 20+ total value ships would result in a spawn rate so low that there was no fun way to handle all the objects

  • Added a way to scale the amount that the current value of score / high score at level gen affects the time between space object spawns

  • Added a floor to the time between space object spawns that can be broken in certain cases to a second floor

  • The actual value can be a small amount lower than the second floor depending on the player's hit combo

• Added a way to scale the x velocity and rotational velocity applied to asteroids, which has been a bit intense since (i think) about 0.1.3

• Asteroids now transfer some momentum when colliding with one another - along both the x- and y-axis as well as rotation; this should hopefully result in fun

Known Issues

• Some color combinations can create problematic visuals, will review and update *eventually*

• Player laser velocity is not correctly adjusted when the ship is accelerating aftward

• The modification to space object spawn rate that happens as the player's hit multiplier increases might not be resetting correctly once that hit multiplier returns to 1.0x - more testing is needed

Development Priorities

• Make DRKs dropped by enemy ships scale the amount of damage they restore proportionally with the enemy ship's stats so that stronger ships provide a bigger bonus

• Review color combinations and potentially add in pre-selected (in addition to the current randomized) palettes

• Attempt steam sdk integration with a focus on supporting steam input for controllers, stretch goal of providing simple achievements and stats tracking

• A real local leaderboard for high scores, ship names, their stats, and some info about the level they were achieved on

• Find a better structure or foundation for save data that includes the current game version for future cases where an update might require that an old save is updated or wiped before playing the new version.

• Expand HUD to full screen when fullscreen is enabled

• Add cargo/mod slots to HUD