today our mutual friend felipe did a playtest for us in a (very) short level i created earlier today. (valeu!)
the game did pretty bad, and i forgot to bring paper, so i scribbled my notes down on a cd envelope. the list is long, but some of the most important things are:
- the level i build - with corridors and tight passages - didnt work. open rooms with door-like passages work much better in a shooter.
- felipe found the movement of the ship to have to much inertia.
in the code that implies a lack of 'friction' (yes, in my version of interplanetary space, there is friction!). i raised the friction and that slowed the ship and nearly neutralized the acelerators... gotta level that now.
- when a player looses one of his ships, this has to be made clear to him in the most spectacular way possible. a big explosion with a corresponding sound would do i guess.
[ about the last point: in the game the player has a deck of 4-6 'cards' representing diferent ships he can switch to at any point of the game. when one ship gets hit so often that it explodes. the payer will then switch to the next ship in the deck, and the destroyed ship will no longer be available. during the playtest this absolutey wasn´t clear to felipe, the (still poorly designed) life-bar didn´t seem to help. so i guess the problem is deeper -the taken damage and the condition of the ship must be made clear to the player in a more obvious way. ]
tomorrow i´ll be on my trip. let´s see if we manage to keep up the work via web.
