Weekly Devlogs Part 2: Week 1 of 16

Hey, this is Tyro again. For me and Kaiden classes have come back online, so we'll be doing more of our weekly devlogs for another good chunk of time!

While I don't have too much to share yet, I have 3 things I can confirm for the game's development.

The first, is that the artist who had done the animations for enemies, is now also working on backgrounds! It may take some time but we're hoping to coordinate some really nice looking environments for people to experience, including elements like camera parallaxing!

Secondly, weapon adjustments. I know, again, right? Well, thing is me and kaiden recently had an epiphany in regards to the recoil behavior of 2 of the game's weapons: The shotgun, and the cannon. One of the odd things is that both of these weapons are functionally the same, just with different projectile types. One has a faster cooldown, while the other has higher damage. While this works on paper, at a mechanical level, compare it to the rifle, which gives a burst of sustained momentum. Let alone the pistol weapon, which allows you to better sustain yourself in the air for longer. So, functionally speaking, the cannon and shotgun don't work in a unique way. Even further, there hasn't been much encouragement to using all 4 of your weapons, as a lot of it comes down to using the pistol weapon for general momentum.

So, here's the plan: We're going to slightly reduce the recoil of the pistol weapon, which will remove its ability to almost infinitely keep a player in the air. HOWEVER, this doesn't remove its ability to sustain your air time for longer than you otherwise would. Along with this, the shotgun and cannon weapons will receive the following 2 adjustments:

While aiming above or below the player, the shotgun has a lower recoil. When aiming in to the left or the right of the player, the shotgun will have greater recoil.

Likewise, the cannon weapon will have higher recoil when aiming above or below the player. When aiming to the left or right of the player, the cannon will have lower recoil.

These changes will functionally affect the cannon and shotgun's use cases, while maintaining the unique use cases for the rifle and pistol. So, for instance, the cannon will be more capable of launching you into the air, while the shotgun allows better burst  mobility to the left and right. However, the rifle won't provide as much as either at their maximum power, BUT is still a very universal movement tool that applies a force over time, and the pistol can help maintain the momentum between your shots without instantly flying past most obstacles and encourage the use of different weapons at a time. 

While we weren't intending to make such a shift in gameplay elements with where we are, we realized this would be a much better change for the game long-term. For now, however, our focus is on designing and building levels, so this change may not get fully implemented until a later time.