Stormbridge
Storm HP + New turrets
Currently, the game ends once you build Faraday's Device which neutralizes the storm. That will change in v0.6, to be released in 24 hours.
In v0.6, the storm will have a health bar.
The bullets are placeholder spheres from the jam and will be replaced with more exciting VFX and sound effects! However, you can already see how the combat looks and I honestly love it. It's just like a boss fight but the boss is a weather system! I think this can be really cool if the storm can evolve to have different stages, and even have map-wide effects, like using the ocean tides or wind to blow away homeless settlers. That way you'll feel like you're literally fighting the map and the whole onslaught of mother nature, rather than a single storm cloud entity.
The boss could also have abilities - temperature drops causing sickness and disabling your farms could be a thing. Oh wait did I just say the storm can disable buildings? Now that sounds totally evil >:D
New Small Turret
A small turret will been added. It has short range and damage, but are cheap to place down.
The Dilemma: Should turrets shoot behind them too?
An obvious strategy is to shield your turrets as turrets are expensive and to allow them to continue firing after the storm passes over them.
However, I am considering if turrets should only be one-direction and deal 2x damage, so that players don't feel obligated to place a shield every time, and feel like the unprotected turrets are only half as effective without shields. In my playthrough, placing shields every 4 structures are not fun as you can't just spam a row of turrets when you feel like it. It feels disruptive. Could be solved with auto-placer but that's just more UI toggles and things for the player to learn and remember. On the other hand, if turrets can shoot behind, the combat looks more exciting as you see more things happening on screen.
Electricity consumption
Turrets will also cost electricity to shoot when electricity is added. You'll have to manage your power grid during the storm, which is key to ensuring your power-hungry structures stay working.
Once the Electricity System is ready, a Medium Turret with more damage and twice the attack speed will be added. A sniper turret with extremely long range or that can make the storm more vulnerable to other turrets could also be added for more strategic options. The sniper turret should have a really long cooldown but do a screen shake when it fires!
Shooting VFX and Sound Design
And here's a first look at the juicy new shooting VFX and lighting! Each turret will have its own unique projectile. You can't hear the GIFs, but I implemented round-robin sound effects for shooting, something new I just learnt in sound design. It is subtle but the sounds will hopefully not just be less repetitive, but more natural too.
Faraday's Turret (the big turret) will be modified to shoot way faster and shoot a volley of ammo from each of its four cannons. I think it will feel pretty epic and powerful (as it should be).
UI Changes
Lastly, the 'View Storm' button was surprisingly not obvious. A streamer I watched was confused when the storm began. He couldn't see it as he was far ahead. Thus I am changing the UI. Card generation will now be disabled during the storm, so no point displaying it and taking up precious center screen space. I want the storm to take center stage. Thus the storm UI, timer and button is moved to the center, hopefully making it more noticeable?
Comments
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about you dilema
i didnt understand what you mean by turrets shooting backwords, but i do understand that you are worried about people spamming shields so maybe just make a limit to how many shields you can create and maybe after each storm make that limit a bit higher.
Ah! Let me try to explain. I'll edit the post to make it clearer too! Right now turrets can only shoot to the left, and not behind them (on the right). The dilemma was whether turrets should have the ability to also face right and shoot at the storm when they are successfully shielded and the storm has passed by them.
The concern was less about people spamming shields, but more of "oh my god, these turrets will be half as effective if I don't shield them, so I need to shield them or else they only shoot half the time and get destroyed, wasting my resources spent on turrets!"
This possibly creates a mentality where the player may feel they aren't playing efficiently if they don't spam shields. And if the game encourages spamming shields too much, I think it becomes an obligation rather than fun. So it's more of trying to not make the game feel like shields are a mandatory.
Possibly I might be overthinking it haha.
HOWEVER, I must say I like your idea of capping shields and increasing the limit with each storm. I really like what you proposed because this can tie in to upgrades in the research tree, or even in-game's island scenarios or random card draws where players can choose to increase the shield limit further and make choices of whether to do that or pick something else!
so if i got you right you dont want to make the game feel like if you dont put shields you are going to lose. right?
you maybe can give each turret a weak shield it wil spawn with.
And i think if the turrets will be able to shoot also backwords it will look and make the game feel better.
You're correct!!
Hmm, if I may ask, what do you mean by a weak shield? If the storm strikes their shield and then moves on, does that mean they're technically invincible to destruction? Would that be too strong? Or do you have another idea in mind?
I do really want turrets to shoot both ways if possible as I think it's visually cooler and slightly more sensible.
i mean by weak shield that the shield wont be as strong and as big as the normal shield (in the size i meant it will only protect the turret him self) and after each storm if the turret survived so the player can fix the shield using resources. i think the strom should hit the turret once and keep going and the shield will be able to take one hit(one hit from only one storm) and in the second hit the turret will get destroyed.
OR
that it will take more time to desroy the turret.
i think the first option is a bit better as long as the resources to fix it are not too easy to get.
About the way tommorow you are uploading the new version of the game right? i really wonder if you are going to win the jam, guess we will see tommorow.
Ah I see! In the first option, the storm will need to circle back to the beginning. Currently the storm doesn't do that and only advances, it cannot go back to chase after the buildings that survived, but I wonder if it should. I think only then will the first option be viable.
As for the second option, I think taking more time to destroy the turret just means the storm is stuck there longer as it's like giving it more HP right? It just slightly reduces the reliance on a shield, but it won't be able to shoot behind as it will always get destroyed.
And yep! Tomorrow I will be uploading v0.6, a new version of the game containing Storm HP, new defense buildings, a dash ability (via research), some new research related to the storm, the first island scenario, as well as a lot of rebalancing by making the storm come earlier, and arrive faster each time! I look forward to finally be able to update it! In fact, I'm already working on v0.7 which will release storages :)