It’s a simple notion that almost sounds facetious but it actually makes an awful lot of sense, so this week I’ve been identifying a few things about the gameplay in Jetboard Joust that I don’t find any fun and figuring out ways to remove them.
1. Collecting Pickups
Though it’s an integral part of the game, constantly having to ‘land’ to collect pickups was proving to bit a bit of a chore. It would often lead into crashing into buildings by accident, getting stuck, losing momentum etc, all of which were no fun. Basically the game is generally too fast paced to allow for movements that require a lot of accuracy and I have to keep focussed on the core of the game which is blowing stuff up. This is not a platform game and it is not ‘Thrust‘!
So I have equipped the player’s jetboard with a tractor beam that automatically activates when it detects a pickup is nearby. Now the player just has to hover above a pickup in order to collect it allowing them to concentrate on the combat.
2. Pickup Generation – Ammo and Health
Whilst working on the bosses I realised a fundamental flaw in the way pickups were awarded. Previously they were only really awarded when an enemy was eliminated which meant that tackling a large enemy with an underpowered weapon would almost guarantee that the player would run out of ammo which was no fun at all. A similar issue existed for health pickups (though it wasn’t quite so detrimental to gameplay).
To overcome this issue I’ve allowed pickups to be awarded mid-battle. I have a tracker that tracks the mount of enemies killed, the amount of health deducted from enemies, and the amount of health lost by the player. If either of these passes a certain threshold a health or ammo pickup is generated as appropriate.
Ammo thresholds are based on the current armed weapon meaning that very powerful weapons that can take out a bunch of enemies at once (e.g. the RPG) are treated very differently from weaker weapons or weapons that can only really take out one enemy at a time. I still have to input and tweak these values but the structure is now there.
Lastly I decided to make the default weapon (the pistol) have infinite ammo. Seeing as I can never really have the player run out of ammo, allowing the default weapon to run out and automatically awarding an ammo cache (as I was previously doing) seemed like a pointless chore – it was a distraction from the core gameplay and no fun.
3. Pickup Generation – Rockets
Many people have commented on how much they like the jetboard ‘rocket attack’ and that it should be more integral to the game. Running out of rockets was no fun. Based on this feedback I have made the way that extra rockets are awarded more transparent (it’s based on the number of enemies killed and their difficulty) by integrating a visual indication of when the next rocket is to be awarded into the HUD. Now the rocket icon ‘charges up’ as enemies are killed making it easy to see when a new rocket will be awarded and thus allowing the player to make the most of their limited allowance.
4. Falling Off The Jetboard
Previously, if the player used the rocket attack to jump from their jetboard and the jetboard (but not the player) got blocked by a building mid-flight, the player would fall from their jetboard and lose a life. Losing a life like this was definitely no fun and often left players scratching their head wondering what had happened.
So I have got rid of that mechanic and implemented partially-destructible buildings instead. Now if the player’s jetboard gets blocked by a building whilst they are in mid-air above the building, the section of the building ‘above’ the jetboard will get destroyed. I may even add a few bonus items hidden inside buildings like to encourage this behaviour, destruction in games is generally fun!
5. The Gatling Gun
This weapon was simply too clunky. Even whilst playtesting I always felt slightly annoyed when I picked it up as it was both irritating to use and pretty ineffective, in other words it was no fun! The reasons for this were straightforward – the initial rate of fire was too slow and the recoil was too great. Upping the initial rate of fire and lowering the recoil have vastly improved the weapon handling and now, hopefully, this weapon will hold its own alongside the others.
6. Explosive Affiliation
I was always dithering about whether to allow the player to get blown up by their own explosive weapons (grenades, RPGs etc). Now I have decided that getting blown up by your own weapons is no fun, so I’ve removed it. This is not Call of Duty!
I have also added another subtle boost to the player in that, if the player destroys an enemy explosive (by shooting it), its ‘affilation’ is switched as if it was the player’s weapon in the first place. This allows the player to use an enemy’s weapons against them and, again, abides by the mantra of more destruction == more fun.
7. Explosive Damage
There were various inconsistencies with the way explosives worked which could make them difficult to predict and less fun to use. Consequently I’ve switched to using a raycasting algorithm for calculating explosive damage, this provides much more predictable (I hesitate to say ‘realistic’) results when explosive damage is blocked by buildings or other sprites.
As the shotgun also suffered from similar problems I’ve also switched to calculating shotgun damage using a raycasting method.
That’s all the ‘no fun’ that was really bothering me but if you’ve played the alpha and think of anything else please do let me know! Many of the above suggestions originate from player feedback.
Dev Time: 2.5 days
Total Dev Time: approx 209.5 days
The Tractor Beam – Crash Landings No Longer Necessary!
Now You Can See When The Next Rocket’s Going To Be Awarded
Working On Destructible Buildings
The More Fun Gatling Gun
Testing A Raycasting Algorithm For Explosive Damage
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