Prototype v0.3.0

New Graphics!

New shaders for planets, stars and tanks! 

Planets have had an graphical upgrade overall including using a custom lighting setup following a tutorial from Ned Makes Games. This is used by the planets to be lit by the central star without  being too overexposed or too dark which is what happened using the default Unity URP lighting. This is also used by the tanks material to try to lighten them up a bit (although that still needs work). 

Stars make use of a procedural noise library from Keijiro Takahashi which keeps them looking unique and also without needing a large noise texture keeping the file size down.

New UI!

The UI has had a big overhaul, it still feels pretty placeholder-y, but it definitely looks better than the default Unity UI at least.

New World Map!

Previously the level select was a placeholder list of buttons to spawn levels, however this proved to be an issue on Android on top of being a bit basic. Whilst this is a game designed to be fairly simple and quick to make, I still liked the idea of a world map.

The next question is what kind of world map? Is the world map a stylised version of the game world with different levels that represent different you can select or like a stylised path that's kind of more like a list but nicer to look at? I ultimately went with something that's closer to the first version but since the game is already stylised I thought why not used the regular game assets, which lead to the next question:

Using the level maps as the world map

Now the level maps themselves are the world map! This change meant that I'm not loading up different levels and replacing the current scene with a new scene (although technically within Unity I wasn't using different scenes, I was instantiating a level prefab), instead the waves of enemies are spawning into a section of the world map itself.

Whilst this meant making a new level was a bit more tricky, it didn't really change the overall approach I was taking, rather I just had to move a bunch of things around. Like planets aren't part of a level now, just the waves of enemies.

I've got more ideas on what I want to do with the world map next, but I'm also trying not to wildly overscope already.

New Tanks!

Previously I wanted each level to be about one tank, keeps the game pretty small and short. However since my world map is also tied to the level progression I didn't want just three tanks. So I've added two new tanks:

Gauss tank: Fires many small weak projectiles to hit wider area of enemies, good for far away faster moving enemies.

Rapid fire tank: Basically like the bigger laser tank but weaker lasers but fires more often!

These tanks aren't fully worked out yet and I'm still balancing all the tanks still. I'm still thinking that the main laser tank is a bit weak compared to the other tanks. But that's also what the rapid laser tank is for, to fill the roll of having fast moving projectiles that can be fired more often at the trade off of power, which means that main laser tank can be buffed for the purpose of being a sniper.

New Sound Effects!

So the game was pretty quiet before, but now it might be a bit too loud. However that's thanks to new sound effects for each tank. It's still a very underdeveloped part of the game and I still need to find a good way of handling lots of sounds without it turning into noise. Also there's no options for adjusting volumes for different sound effects.

What's next?

Next I want to spend more time on the audio system, at least adding options to reduce noise levels. I want to work on more levels. I've got plans to add some new obstacles like asteroid fields that you can either fire around or attempt to blast through, and I want some more indication of level progression on the world map itself.

Also I've started on the Steam process and it looks pretty intense in terms of the amount of info to fill out and time it takes to submit a game.

Video Devlog: 

Thanks to anyone who checks this out, it means a lot!