052521 Map and Moves (Patreon)

Got some stuff to talk about in this post, so let's get to it!

The UI

Alright, so the main think you've most likely noticed above is that I've updated Lance's UI for his health and magic! This new health meter can do a better job of showing exactly how much health you have (rather than just showing "full" or "half" gems, and is also easier to understand I feel. Overall, the health meter is not much different from its demo counterpart.

The Magic Meter

The magic meter, however, has changed completely. In the demo you could get upgrades to increase the amount of magic you could have and amount of abilities you can use. Now, the meter is a fixed size no matter how much magic you have (this stat is still used for passive abilities) and you will be able to double its size later with an upgrade. This change should make it a lot easier to understand when you can and can't use Lance's abilities, and how often you can use them.

The meter changes dynamically depending on how it's being used (and I will be changing it graphically to reflect this.) For instance, when you can throw a shield the meter is full. If you can't, the meter is empty. If you throw magic cards, you can throw them until the meter is empty and then you must wait for it to refill. The dagger can reflect how much "charge" you have in it from holding the button down (which isn't implemented yet.) When you go underwater, it becomes the air meter (as you can't use any other abilities underwater anyways) so it will let you know how long you can stay under. When it runs out, you will start running out of health instead. Later, when I implement consumable items (like bombs) the meter will simply turn into the number that you have remaining.

I've made these changes and rebalances to Lance's abilities to help the game be easier to understand and more fun to play. During both demos, players found that they were always just using the weaker forms of abilities due to just running out of magic all the time, and many players didn't even understand what was going on.

Forced Ability Slots

Another thing players found difficulty with the demo was equipping and swapping abilities. I have tried to mitigate any confusion by just forcing all Movetech abilities (such as Lance's spin) to Action 1 and Thrown abilities (the shield, magic cards etc.) to Action 2. The reason for this is that I could never see the player having a situation in which they'd want two thrown abilities and no movetech abilities. I don't want to make the kind of game where having a specific ability setup doesn't allow you to move between platforms or get different places.

This screen was a point of contention during the last demo. but I'm glad to say that it's at least "better." I can't improve it much more than this for now without a significant rewrite, but for the time being, the menus are simply meant to "work" and get the job done. Once all of the abilities and how they work are written in stone, I will make a much better UI, but I don't want to spend time on it and then have to change it later.

If you don't want to deal with the above menu though, you can now switch Lance's thrown ability during gameplay by using the shoulder buttons (demonstrated in the video above.)

The Minimap

I've made improvements to the minimap display, making markers easier to see as well as adding additional marker types. I also added arrows to signify parts of the stage that lead to other stages.

I may consider changing Willow's marker later if players don't know what it means, but the current one matches her silhouette quite well, so I think it should be ok for now.

Conclusion

I'm hoping that these changes, as well as Lance being able to walk and run with the push of a button to go faster, make the game easier and more fun to play. Patrons who have tested the build from the other day have said that Lance's running and short spin are making the game a lot better and easier to control, and I'm hoping these changes to the abilities help as well.