#future changes

First some small things:

- Sounds and models fit eachother, except for the alarm sound. Will change that to a Horn or Trumpet probably

- The player’s healthbar needs to be more obvious. Will be making it bigger

- The weapon UI is bound to 1920x1080. Gotta make that dynamic for different screens. And learn how to properly do that.

Then the big guys:

- The game lacks variety.

     - The enemies aren’t varied. I will firstly add some enemies with speed, health and attack differences to see how it will affect weapon-drop-balance, and later work in more differing enemies.

     - The weapons aren’t varied or distinct. Possibility for changing this is changing the length of the weapons, and showing the differences in damage and durability in the UI

- The lack of being able to do something once you are without a weapon. I’ll be implementing something I thought of before for that, and that is being able to pick up a really shitty stick-weapon if one rolls through bushes when one doesn’t have a weapon. You can still fight, but you’ll have to go out of your way to a bush and get very little in return, making managing your resources (weapons) still important.

- Weapons are too plentifull. After just a bit of playing you amass a large amount of weapons on the ground from the grunts. If balance was right, 1 weapon should cause 1 dead enemy. Now you can hit a lot of enemies with 1 weapon, causing the 1weapon:1enemy to skew to 1weapon:666enemy. This can be helped in multiple ways:

     1. Lower the amount of grunts. This would mean these enemies would have to be replaced by other enemies. This would mean the player gains less weapons because one swordswing would cause less damage with less enemies packed together. 

     2. Continuing with the replacing (or adjusting) of the enemies. Having enemies that take more swings (or specifically special attack swings) to kill would burn through the player’s weapons quicker, causing their worth to be more of a 2weapon:1enemy. Grunts however can still be 1weapon:1.5enemy for example. This would cause the player to stockpile on weapons first by prioritising grunts. This again would cause a nice dynamic where the player has to decide based on the weapons at hand wether to attack the grunts or attack more dangerous enemies first. 

     2addendum. Another way to balance the 1:1 is to have some enemies not give weapons at all. For example, bowmen have no sword weapons, nor do wardogs. 

     3. Lower the droprate of weapons. This would mean that, instead of 1 enemy dropping 1 weapon, enemy’s weapons either drop by a chance %, or there are conditions that make the enemy not drop their weapon. The most obvious condition would be getting killed by the player’s special attack. This wasn’t in my original vision however, as I want players to be able to see weapons as disposable, and that breaking one weapons brings you the next weapon.

- A way to regain life would be nice. I actually had thought of this before the demo, but forgot to implement it. I want the special attack hitting give the player health back. Forgetting to implement it might’ve been good though, as the player can freely use the attack, and it hits many many enemies, giving you a gazzillion health.

- And lastly there’s still the problem of herding (there was a playtester who literally said it was like herding sheep... and no, they don’t read this blog). This might be removed by more diversity in enemies (and their movement speed and patterns), forcing the player to go into the enemies by prioritising going after specific enemies (see last post), or denying acces to kiting enemies by AoE-like “crowd”control used against the player, which is probably something I won’t be doing for now, but will keep in mind. Just having a tree suddenly fall and block a path around enemies could also cause one to stop kiting, or having more narrow spaces to move around in.

Also, shouldn’t forget this, there are some feedback-to-the-player things that should be added as they are lacking.

- As said above, the weapons and their differences aren’t explained. They feel the same.

- Grabbing weapons. It’s not obvious a weapon has been grabbed, it just appears in your inventory. More diverse weapons to pick up should help make it more obvious, and a sound of picking something up should also be played. Possibly the UI-part where a new weapon is put can light up if I wanna get fancy.

- Weapons breaking. A loud sound already plays when your weapon breaks, but that’s it. A visual cue in the UI with some kind of breaking animation overlayed on top of the main weapon should make it more obvious when your sword is gone, and possibly some kind of (particle) effect in the game. Also having the empty inventory spaces actually turn red or grey can give that little bit more quick visual information in the UI, knowing that you’re not playing with a full inventory any more.

- Getting damaged. Currently, the feedback for getting damaged is a bloody slash sound effect, the red invulnerability halo, the HP-bar shooting down, and the blood particle effect. Ways to make getting damaged more obvious would be adding a sound effect (a person in pain), making the invulnerability better with actual blinking or a white colour, the HP-bar showing the damage using one of them white bars that show “this was where your HP was”, and have the blood particle effect for the player shoot out further, harder and more red.

- Enemy health. I first didn’t know how necessary it was for the player to have this information, but if there are going to be multiple enemies it’s going to be useful to have another way of prioritising who to go for. So I’ll give enemies a HP-bar above their heads.