More Drone shots

The third demo of Super Space Galaxy is already out, but even at this stage, I still find myself tweaking some fundamental aspects of the game. This week I improved how the Drones shoot at you. Yes, even years into the project I’m still obsessing about how to handle the enemies shooting at you since it’s such an important part of the main gameplay loop.

It all started when I found a Drone shooting uselessly past my ship. I was going at a consistent speed, so all the Drone had to do was shoot directly at me. Instead, it was using the ballistics system I’d programmed and shooting ahead of me. Seeing this felt rather exhausting. I’d revamped how the Drones move and shoot many times already, and it still wasn’t quite right!

Before now, my plan was always to have the shots move away from the Drones at the same speed, but also move towards your ship at the same speed too. These dual priorities meant that enemies would only be able to shoot at you if their speed matched yours. My intention was for dodging shots to feel ‘fair’ since they always moved towards you at a predictable speed. I also thought it would feel strange if the shots moved away from Drones at varying speeds. After all, if Drones could shoot their bullets more quickly, why wouldn’t they just do that all the time?

This time, I decided to drop the requirement for the bullets to come out of the Drones at a consistent speed. The new system still requires that Drones match your speed somewhat to keep things plausible, but it’s able to be a lot more lenient. I also got rid of the complex ballistics system and had them simply shoot directly at where you are now. In some ways this makes the Drones less smart, more like the imps in Doom. Now that they can surround you from multiple angles, however, that doesn’t matter any more. From the perspective of the Drone, this doesn’t make much sense, but I don’t think anyone will consider the perspective of the Drone except me!

Making this change also forced me to change my views. What I learned is that it’s more important that the shots move towards the player at a consistent speed than move away from the Drones consistently. As a player, you’re only interested in how things affect you. They’ll feel right if they’re fair, not if they’re realistic.

None of this would have been possible without first overhauling the Drones’ movement the way I did. Now they can stay in formation around you, Drones don’t need to anticipate your movements in the same way. It’s enough for multiple Drones to be shooting at you from different angles. This has made the old ‘fling‘ system I implemented redundant, but it’s a sacrifice I’m happy to make.

I’m hoping this latest renovation will be the last one for the Drones. Work is already mostly-complete on a new enemy, the Blades, so the game should have two fully-complete enemies soon. Expect the innovations to be in the 4th playable demo.

Thanks for reading,

Kenneth Dunlop