Devlog 01- Major Strides

Well, I seem to be getting somewhere with this. The new update adds enemy explosions, hit feedback, and a more obvious health indicator.  But more importantly than all of that, it utterly changes what kind of a game Hetzer's gonna be when it comes out. So let's talk about that!

Hetzer started out as a straight copy of the Luftrausers gameplay formula- you fly around and shoot things, more difficult things show up as the game goes on, eventually you die. As such the intent was to have a wide variety of enemies with varying attack patterns all going after you at the same time. There is, as I discovered to my dismay, an issue with this approach.

Balancing all those different enemy types is really goddamn hard.

The problem is that if there are enough types of enemy onscreen, all of them with their own attack patterns, then there wind up being so many kinds of projectile on so many trajectories that you can't actually dodge anything. At that point your choices don't actually matter, which sorta defeats the point of an interactive video game at all.

My solution to this problem was very simple: reduce the number of enemies you can face at any given time. Now, instead of just having a play button take you to the gameplay, you're able to play various modes, or "courses"- two at present, but I most certainly intend to add more. Each course has a very small set of enemies beside the usual transports and health pinatas, which have been set up to synergise with one-another and create fun gameplay. Overall, it's a more focused and clear experience, which is hopefully more fun and certainly easier to balance.

All the other changes have been mainly graphical and, to be perfectly frank with you, not much to write home about. The background grid is less hideously ugly (although it has a distinct bathroom tile vibe now), the enemies (barring the health pinatas) explode, you can actually see your health without staring into the corner of the screen, there are hit flashes for both you and the enemies... everything's just that little bit better. 

Now if you'll excuse me I'll be passing out from exhaustion after spending three days wrangling past me's spaghetti code and drawing pixel art with a mousepad. Maybe when I come to I'll be well-rested enough to take a new set of screenshots now that all the old ones are totally outdated...