As I mentioned earlier, I’ve been spending some time tweaking FLAT‘s mechanics and presentation. With new post-7DFPS builds now available, I thought it’d be a good time to go over my todo/done list and briefly (brief is a relative term – I like writing) look at what value each item had for the game.
* Adjusted starting healthkit count (is now 0)
* Adjusted supply capsule healthkit count (is now 3)
Initially the player started with one health kit, and each supply capsule would yield two more.Toward the dragon encounter, health scarcity became an issue as securing more health involves dealing with skaters *and* the dragon at the same time. By removing the initial health kit, we in part balance out the early game impact of increased health kit availability. The remaining early game healthkit surplus provides a safe buffer zone for new players as they become familiar with the game mechanics.
* Adjusted SMG damage (slightly more powerful)
* Adjusted enemy skater spawn count and max skater variable (now is linked to how many weapons you’ve picked up)
* Adjusted enemy skater damage (slightly reduced)
* Adjusted enemy skater health (halved)
Player feedback of our original build highlighted an issue with difficulty. To make players feel more powerful, we decreased the health and damage of enemy skaters, whilst at the same time increasing their numbers proportionally every time a more powerful weapon is obtained. To increase the player’s feeling of control over the endgame encounter, we increased the damage of the third level weapon, allowing players to quickly deal with previously overwhelming numbers of enemy skaters whilst also dealing with the dragon.
* Adjusted dragon head health (halved)
* Adjusted dragon terminal flee velocity (reduced)
* Added maximum dragon flee distance
The first phase of the final encounter was by far the longest. The dragon’s huge presence serve as a crescendo for the final part of the game. The initial aggressive and overpowered attacks throw the player off balance and force them to reconsider their earlier feelings of power when finding the third level weapon. However, if this goes on too long, it becomes tedious and fatiguing. By reducing the dragon’s first phase health by half, we provide the potent thread against the player’s power without wearing them down.
With enemy skaters appearing as a distraction during the second phase of the dragon encounter and weapon kickback also slowing the player down, the initial dragon flee speeds were excessive, and the dragon would often move beyond the game’s viewable distance before the player could catch up. By slightly reducing this speed and setting a maximum distance, we increased the accessibility of supply capsules and gave players a chance to take on enemy skaters without fear of losing the dragon.
* Added pain sounds
* Added death sound
* Added skating sounds for enemy skaters
* Added firing sound to enemy skaters
* Added minimum firing distance for enemy skaters (to stop point blank shots)
Feedback from our 7th day build indicated that many players were unaware when new enemies had been spawned, and continued skating, pulling along an ever growing horde of skaters early in the game before they had weapons to deal with such encounters. Skating sounds that get louder as enemies get closer helps
Players were also reporting feeling like they were dying before they realised they were under attack. Pain sound cues help with this by highlighting when a player is taking damage.
Preventing enemies from firing when too close for players to dodge also helps with encounters.
* Added pain sounds for enemy skaters
* Added death sounds for enemy skaters
* Added pain sounds for dragon
* Added death sound for dragon
To help give players better feedback on their combat performance, we added pain and death sounds to compliment the existing blood splatters. This is particularly helpful during the first phase of the dragon encounter, where only the head of the dragon can take damage.
* Adjusted supply capsule visual indicator
* Added maximum spawn time for supply capsules (pickupTime wasn’t actually being reset when supply capsules spawned)
* Added supply capsule spawn sound
* Added supply capsule destruction
With supply capsules being the mechanism through which the game progresses, we needed to be sure that players wouldn’t miss them. In our 7th day build, only one crate would spawn at a time, and distant crates were never removed from the game. We received feedback from players who hadn’t seen a crate spawn and thought the objective of the game was to last as long as possible against enemy skaters with the first weapon.
Our first attempt at making supply capsules easier to find was to create a looping sound that crates played, which got louder as the player approached. This worked well, but wasn’t compatible with methods we were using to play other sounds within the game, and uniting them would require a larger rewrite than we wanted to do for our first update. We liked the way that an audio cue helped players know when to shift between general skating and hunting for a supply capsule, so we kept a non-looping sound in the game.
We replaced the red dot crate indicator with a tall ‘sky beam’ that could be seen from long distances. Longer term, we’re likely to make the indicator a little less specific (perhaps by fading it out as it gets close to the ground), and require players to search within a small area (it’d also be nice to make it rotate with the sky), but for now, this is a good way to make sure that players are clear about what they’re meant to be doing.
* Added splash screen for death ending
* Added automatic quit after dragon slaying ending splash screen
* Added splash screen for pause state
* Added pause state
In our 7th day build, the game didn’t end when the player died, and players had to manually close and relaunch the game. For this update we didn’t want to go through the process of writing game reinitialisation routines, so we added a splash screen for dying, and automatically close the game when the player clicks. It’s not ideal, but it does make playing the game over and over a bit less tedious. We also made the game close after the ending splash screen rather than allowing players to skate around in a world where enemies wouldn’t spawn (in the previous build, enemies didn’t spawn during dragon encounters).
We added a pause state where the game’s logic wouldn’t be run whilst the game wasn’t grabbing the mouse, and put a pause screen up to hide the interrupted game.
* Adjusted number of scuff marks (tripled)
* Adjusted aspect of scuffmark images (quick fix to sidestep in-engine transformation)
* Added background scenery
A lot of feedback we had from our 7th day build indicated that players were feeling disoriented and directionless. Background scenery was always on our todo list, but we didn’t quite get it in before 7DFPS ended. Getting some scenery into our first update was a high priority, and though we didn’t have time to put in environmental visuals (storm clouds, fog-like tinting for distant objects) and effects (lighting flashes, falling snow), a few mountains have made a huge difference, not only as a placebo (it doesn’t really matter which direction you go – things always spawn forwards of the player), but also as a reference point for player movement/orientation and finding enemies/supply capsules/the dragon if the player looks away.
* Adjusted keyboard look speed (increased)
* Added alternate health key (Q and H)
* Added alternate firing key (X and Up)
* Adjusted dying time (halved)
* Adjusted shooting logic to prevent players from shooting during the last half of their death
* Added additional console output to track spawning
* Added default value for Player->gameOver (false)
We also made a number of other fixes and tweaks (the above are just a few examples) that were important, but not quite individually noteworthy enough to go into.
The short term todo list still has a number of other items listed in it, the most prominent of which are music (music cues will help players keep track of when enemy skaters spawn, and give additional ambience and atmosphere to the game), more background visuals, and an indicator for dragon location that can help players find it again if they fail to keep up with it or head in the wrong direction. We’d also like to have enemy skaters leave bodies (which we have sprites for), and something nice when the dragon is defeated (currently it just disappears).
If you’ve read this far, thanks! I hope you’ve enjoyed this look at FLAT’s latest update. The game still feels rough around the edges, but this update addresses a number of outstanding gameplay issues and helps FLAT be more enjoyable for what it is 
- Cheese
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