Monday, November 28, 2011

Experience System

The new experience point system rewards for playing well, even if the player does not win the entire game.  This system encourages constant attacking and defending instead of just hiding and avoiding attacks to try to wait the game out.

This experience contributes to the player's level, which indicates how skilled and experienced a player is.  Each rank earns a new background for the player's scorecard, which all other players can see.  Trying to reach that next rank will drive players to keep playing for those experience points.  Eventually these points may unlock abilities, customization options or more, so long as it does not affect game play or cause an unfair advantage.

If you've played games with a similar system such as the recent Call of Duty games, you've probably realized how addicting this system is.  You may have also noticed the small "tick" sound you get every time you either hit an enemy or score some experience points in these games, which although sounds minimal actually contributes a great deal to the reward system in the player.  When the player hears the soft but satisfying tone accompanying the experience, it reminds them that they are moving closer towards that next rank.  I've been attempting to make my own version of this, while still making it relevant to the game.

Feel free to post any ideas you have about the experience system and how it could be used to enhance the game.

Monday, November 21, 2011

Speeding Up Gameplay

Keeping the game fast-paced is a priority in Nexus's development.  Players need to be doing something at all times in game with as little down time as possible to keep the gameplay as interesting and exciting as possible.  The following are some changes made to make the game play faster:
  • Recycling attacks
    • When you successfully defend against an attack the game will now reward you with your own powerup of that attack.  This will allow the player to send the attack back to the enemy, giving more incentive to fighting attacks rather than just avoiding them.  This also increases the amount of powerups in each game, creating larger and more active battlefields for each game.  The only exception are attacks that must be avoided, such as the laser and circle shot.
  • More powerups
    • As stated in the previous change, the more powerups the more active the game field, so powerups will now spawn faster when you shoot enemy wormholes manually.  Increasing the amount of attacks too much can cause the game to lag and can bring frustration, so this has been balanced with the next change.
  • Larger battlefield
    • The game field has grown allowing for more movement to dodge attacks and catch up to floating powerups.  The game feels much less cramped and now provides much-needed breathing room.
 These changes and more are bringing some major improvements to the game and I when the next round of testing comes you guys will like it.

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Occam's Razor

Gameplay was getting too confusing, especially for new users.  I've decided that the newest version will have two main gameplay elements removed for simplification: the ship ability and the friendly powerups.

The ship ability was a neat idea, but adding an extra button and more functionality without much explanation only caused frustration.  Players that did not know about it had a very large disadvantage, and a surprisingly large amount of people appeared to have overlooked the ability.

Friendly powerups were even more confusing, because the idea of sending something to yourself is not something innate.  The initial idea was to use this as a step to team powerups in team battles, but the benefits do not outweigh the cost of using them.  It slows down gameplay by having to think about which button sends what, and often players would accidentally send friendly powerups to enemies, inadvertently helping them instead of hurting them.

If you were a fan of these, don't worry, they aren't completely gone.  They are still in the code, so if I can get them to add to the game without taking anything away, they could come back.

New Powerup: Fighter Drones

I gave you guys a sneak peek at one of the latest updates to Nexus before I moved to the new blog, and in case you missed it here's what it was:




These guys are fighter drones, one of the newest power ups added to the game.  They are search and destroy ships that seek out the enemy, launch an attack, and then attempt to evade any retaliation.  They are nasty and a very effective addition to the arsenal.

When you launch this attack at your opponent it will spawn four drones into your opponents field.  Right now their behavior is actually pretty simple.  They have two main states:
  • Attacking
    • The enemy has been sighted within a certain range
    • Aim at the enemy and fire laser attack
    • If the enemy gets too close or the attack has finished, find a new spot and enter search mode
  • Searching
    • Move to a random position on the map
    • If the player is spotted nearby in close proximity go into attack mode

 The behavior will probably be changed after I get some data from testing, but for now it is pretty suitable for the game.

Old Posts


The development blog for Codename: Nexus is starting fresh with the new name, to view the older posts when Nexus was still called Rift, check out the rift development blog.