Balancing the game

Donnerfaust starts to remind a real game. There is now 10 levels, 6 different fighter planes, 5 different bomber planes. Upgrade system is now implemented to the game and player can upgrade the AA-gun between the levels. Now I have been able to play the game and test how the game play feels. I quickly noticed that since I first tested the game on PC with mouse control, the game was much easier than in phone/tablet with touch controls. The problem with the touch controls is that your finger blocks your view each time you shoot something. I now have to start balancing the game for touch screen devices, since currently the game spawns enemies too fast.

Another problem I noticed was that the random generator for spawning enemies does not work very well. Sometimes it can spawn the screen full of bomber planes which can take multiple shots before they get destroyed. This can cause a situation where it is nearly impossible for the player to destroy the planes in time. I have to implement a system that makes sure that there is not too many bombers in screen at once.

I also wan't to give a player change to catch a little bit of breath every once in a while. Now the game starts spawning enemies faster and faster towards the end and it leads to a situation where player is only shooting bottom of the screen, since there is so many enemies coming all the time that player does not have time to react anymore.

Donnerfaust is NOT dead...

I have been quite busy during the winter and this little hobby of mine got less attention. But however the game project is not dead. I actually started to work with the game again few weeks ago. I have now updated the graphics and all the things mentioned on previous post are implemented to the game.

New plane sprites

There are now more different planes and the planes does not fly only straight line down. They follow randomly generated path, that makes them turn every once in awhile. However this scripts need still a little improvement. The planes also appear in various formations.

I made one major change and made the player's AA-gun to be automatic. So instead a single shots the player can fire three rounds from magazine in automatic mode. This gives me the possibility to increase the game speed and make the game more intense. I also abandoned the idea of different AA-guns, but instead I plan to make the player's AA-gun upgradable. By meaning that player can update the fire rate, damage, magazine size, bullet velocity, etc. I just did not like the single shot AA-gun, since it kinda made the game speed little slow and that made the game feel little boring. The enemy airplanes can also take more shots than before. This gives more pressure to player.

My next steps are to add more levels and enemies. I have already drawn quite a few sprites for enemies. I also try to figure out how to add the upgrade system to the game and then implement the first version of it to the next game iteration.

Bellow is the video where you can see the current state of the game. You can actually see in the beginning of the video that I originally intended to call this game Donnerwand.

Current state of the game

Planning the next prototype

Now I am planning the next prototype. So the feature I am want to implement to the next prototype are scoring system, enemy formations, level progression, enemies ability to attack on player anti-air gun and bonus targets that will travel sideways on the screen. Bonus targets are harmless to player, but if player shoots them he gets bonus score as a reward.

I will also start to plan a system that progressively increases the difficulty of the game as the time goes by. Meaning that at  the begining there will be less enemies, but towards the end of the level there starts to be a swarm of enemies incoming. Since I only have few different enemy types the next prototype will contain only one level and the game ends after the level is complete.

So to summarize what is required for the next prototype. One level with atleast two different enemy types. Bonus targets that provide score boost if destroyed. Enemies may appear in different formations and there needs to be atleast five different formations to choose form. Progressive difficulty so that the game gets harder towards the end of the level. Scoring system to that provides score based on players performance. Finally agressive enemies, so that player needs to look after his anti-air gun.

Also the screen orientation and aspect ration must be mobile device friendly. Currently it's 1:1.

I will not release the next prototype until all features above are implemented into the game. So next time you see video about Donnerfaust, it will contain all mentioned features.

Donnerfaust idea list

As I told earlier I keep track of my ideas for the game, so I thought that I could as well release he current list here, just to show what I am talking about. Here are the current ideas that I have listed for Donnerfaust. Please notice that the list is not in prioritized order.

• Scoring system. System to give player scores based on performance. Combo bonus, multikill bonus, etc.
• Highscore list. List to keep track on highscores.
• Level progression. Game will be easier at first, but gets harder as time goes by. Different enemies, etc.
• Different unlockable AA-guns. Guns with different damage level, loading time, blast radius, and bullet speed etc.
• Special weapons. Special weapons that has limited ammunition.
• Friendly AA-machinguns. In tight situations, player could call for AA-machinegun vehicles to give additional fire support.
• Friendly radar. Player could set a radar unit that will inform player about incoming air crafts.
• Bonus targets. If player destroys these targets they could give player a bonus score or bonus abilities.
• Enemy formations. Enemy aircrafts would attack if different formations. Line, column, wedge, diamond, etc.
• Enemies can attack. Enemy can shoot player’s AA-gun, if it gets close enough. Adds more pressure to the game.
• Google play integration. Enables the online highscores and achievements.

Most of the ideas listed above will be included to the game, but some may get discarded if for some reason I don't find the suitable for the game.

Prototype 2 and a name for the game

I made second prototype which now is following the theme that I established earlier. Now there is an anti-air gun that is controlled by player. It shoots anti-air rounds towards the enemy planes that are incoming from top of the screen. There is not much changes to the game mechanics except that now there is visible bullet flying that explodes after it reaches the point where player clicked. I made two different enemy aircrafts; Fighter and Bomber. Fighter is faster, but can be destroyed by single round. It also does less damage to factories than bomber. Bomber is slower, but it takes two rounds to get destroyed.

The graphics are not yet final, but they are giving the direction. I will keep the graphics as simple as possible. Same goes to sounds. I don’t poses any kind of audio skills, so I have to look up how I will implement the sounds to my game.

Game windows aspect ratio is completely wrong. So I will fix that to the next prototype. If I will play this game with mobile devices, I want to use portrait orientation for display. This way I have more time to react on incoming enemies.

First sprites for enemy aircraft

There is one more thing. I made up a name for the game; Donnerfaust. So now on I will refer this game by calling it Donnerfaust.

First prototype

Here is a video of my first prototype to test the game play. As you can see it is still extremely simple. Targets are marked by clicking the mouse button, and after  0.75 seconds there will be an explosion. If the red square happens to be in the explosion radius it will be destroyed. There is one second delay after each shot before player can shoot again. This represents the loading time and prevents the player to spam the game area with too many explosions. If the squares manage to reach the bottom of the screen the health bar is reduced by 10 points. At the start there is 100 health, so if 10 squares reach the bottom the game is over. Score system is not yet implemented, but scoring should work so that the faster objects provide more score than the slower ones. I would also like to add some sort of combo system and bonus if you manage to get multiple objects with one shot.

As you can see the game is far far from ready. The game is unbalanced, missing a proper theme, no sounds, etc. So there is still lot of work to be done...

The Idea

The game development starts with an idea and here is my first game idea that I am going to introduce in this blog. The very basic idea in this game is to prevent objects reaching the bottom of the screen. The objects will appear top of the screen and kind of “fall” downwards to bottom. Player must try to shoot the objects, but he must take the speed of the objects into account. Practically this means that when player touches somewhere in the screen an explosion will appear after a short delay. This idea just popped to my mind while I was playing Tetris with my Windows Phone.

This game could be some sort of artillery spotting game for example. Where player is playing a role of forwards observer and giving fire commands to artillery. Don’t know yet, but let’s see how game ends up. At this point I will want to leave the theme still open, since the idea is based solely on game mechanics. 

So my very first step is to build a very simple concept to test this idea in practice. After I have tried the game concept few times, I will think about what sort of theme I should use around the idea. 

Idea illustrated