Alpha 0.1 - Movement Test

This is the first build of the game. The purpose of this build was to test the movement system and to gain feedback on it.

The graphics are placeholders as I have not yet worked on my Vector Renderer yet, but these placeholders are somewhat representative of the intended final product (A triangle for the ship and dots for the bullets).
I also intend for there to be some sort of missile projectile that fires downwards to allow for hitting targets below the player.

The movement and shooting mechanics are based on the Arcade Game "Scramble" by Konami. I have found a video of the game which I have placed below.

The game also serves as the inspiration for my level design going forward, but obviously there will be no sprites, less complicated terrain, less colours, and probably less detailed sounds.

Returning to the topic of the devlog, I have implemented a simple 8-way movement system to control the player. The player moves more quickly to the left and right compared to up and down. This is because I intend on having the screen be horizontal. The game Scramble uses the top and bottom of the screen for a HUD whereas I don't intend to have as detailed a HUD and can use a horizontal layout for better player vision.

The bullets that the player can shoot will eventually travel faster once I decide how fast the level will scroll. The main purpose of them in this build was to showcase/test functionality rather than demonstrate the finished idea.

DEVELOPMENT BEHIND THE SCENES STUFF:
Originally, I had messed up the movement so there was a large delay before moving after pressing a button. The movement was also much too fast.


This made is very hard to control and I kept going offscreen.

Then I used a little bit of code from the EightWayMovement script to correctly set the direction variables. (I was originally rounding the movement axes, but this solution used the ternary operator). In addition to this, I made the player move much slower.

These two changes made the movement feel right to me, and definitely improved the movement significantly. (You can see I also had the shooting working at this point.)

FEEDBACK:

I have now received some feedback.
Generally, people seemed to like the movement, but said they thought the bullets should move faster. I was already intending on increasing the bullet speed, but It was good to see that everybody agreed on that. Something I thought was interesting was that one person said I should have the bullets move faster than the ship, which I hadn't thought about, but it makes sense. I will see how it feels once I actually have some levels and objects to shoot at!

References
Scramble Gameplay: "Old Classic Retro Gaming" on Youtube.com (youtube.com/watch?v=3Vc-RIkpk40)