Encounter targeting

This week, I solved a problem that’s been dogging Super Space Galaxy for years.

Combat in Super Space Galaxy works more like an RPG than a traditional space shooter. Instead of always facing up and shooting at enemies coming down, you can freely fly around and point your ship anywhere. It’s all part of my plan to introduce freedom to the space shooters like Tyrian that inspired me. With joypad controls, you simply use the right joystick to aim, but it wasn’t so easy to aim properly if you’re using the keyboard.

Only critique is that it’s very hard to aim.

Paypercutts, itchio user

Of course, a solution is available. It’s possible to target your enemies, which makes your ship automatically aim towards them. The trouble is, players who haven’t been in a battle yet won’t know about this. I could just add a text box telling you what to do or something, but I’m loathe to simply pause the game and have text appear to tell you what to do; I consider it crude and ineffective. This left the game with a serious problem. Your first encounter with an enemy is crucial to showing players the appeal of the game, but if they don’t find out about targeting it could be confusing and make them quit instead.

At some point it occurred to me that I always started a battle by targeting an enemy. One of my rules is that when you find yourself doing the same thing over and over, you should automate it! That led me to add a new kind of auto-target at the start of a fight. Now, even if the player never learns about manual targeting, they’ll still do fine.

This new ‘Encounter targeting’ automatically targets the most relevant enemy, and this involves overriding some of the normal limits to have targeting works. Normally, when you press the target button you lock on to an enemy only if it’s within a suitable distance and within a certain angle of where you’re pointing. ‘Encounter’ targets ensure that you find an enemy no matter which way you’re facing or how far away they start.

I think this shows the importance of staying with problems. Back when I made Lone Starr, that game had a host of problems getting in the way of being fun, and I didn’t know how to solve them. Now that I’m making Super Space Galaxy, I know that just because you don’t know a solution straight away, you’ll find one if you just don’t quit.

Thanks for reading,

Kenneth Dunlop