Sublevel Zero Devlog

6DOF shooters have a tradition of including an optional auto-level or auto-roll system, and SL0 is not going to differ in that regard.

Being free to move on all axes can take a bit of getting used to, and without help, new players might find themselves panicking about being at 58.392 degrees to the ground and not knowing what to do about it. So whenever the ship is off-axis, autolevelling mode gradually rolls toward zero to give them one less thing to think about.

Here’s a scientific diagram to illustrate.

It’s particularly helpful for players using controllers, since with limited sticks/buttons it challenging to find an optimal layout. We’ve got a number of layouts for the player to choose from, which do allow all movements, but it’s not as simple and a mouse/keyboard setup.

Obviously, it’s entirely optional - we expect that most players won’t need it for long, and you have more control without it. But hopefully it makes SL0 a little more inviting to the 6DOF newbie!

-Luke

We’ve just implemented a system so we can make weapons use multple ammo types. For example, a cluster missile might use 1 missile and 8 small missiles (currently called ‘Darts’ in SL0). This gives us more flexibility in balancing higher-level weapons while keeping our ammo system simple.

We didn’t want to have one universal ammo type - this would make it hard to balance, and in our experience  is rarely satisfying for the player. On the other hand, having one ammo type per weapon would be untenable for the number of guns we’ve got. The system in SL0 strikes a balance, with 3 regular ammo types and 3 missile ammo types. The player doesn’t have to deal with loads of different types, but there are enough that we can (hopefully!) balance the scarcity of each and make the player think about what weapons to use.

Having weapons with multiple ammo types could end up confusing the player though. With one ammo type, it’s immediately obvious what effect firing a weapon has on your ammo stocks. With two, it’s a little trickier to grasp how firing weapon X changes your ability to fire weapon Y. We want to minimise this so we’re playing around with how to display ammo info to players, since keeping track of numbers manually isn’t fun, or a skill we intended for SL0 to test.

Fortunately, again, having 6 ammo types (and having them further divided into 2 groups) helps us a lot here, so players should be able to keep an eye on their reserves.

A sneak peek of our new recoil system!

As you may have noticed, this past couple of weeks have been all about guns. Sublevel Zero has a strong focus on looting and crafting, so we’ve been careful to make sure that our core code allows us to easily prototype lots of new weapons. We’ve got a lot more on the way, but have another gif on us (this one’s the Flak Cannon), and find out more in our latest blog post...

http://www.sigtrapgames.com/new-weapons/

A couple more of the many, many weapon prototypes we’ve been working on. First, the flamethrower:

And secondly, the Ion Beam:

Working on some weapon prototypes for Sublevel Zero...

We’ve just posted a new blog on the importance of player choice in Sublevel Zero. Check it out! http://www.sigtrapgames.com/making-everything-matter/