Since my last post, I have implemented the the core USP of the project, a system which grants the player score based on the quality of their kills. A standard kill grants 10 points but this can be increased through a wide range of variables such as;
if the player is airborne
they were far from their target
they didn't use their scope
the enemy was killed in one hit
the killing blow was a headshot (I gave the enemies heads)
These basic variables have been added to to demonstrate the system and how it encourages the player to attempt more challenging kills rather than going for a simple and efficient playstyle like in other FPS.
I also added to the UI to show the score increasing. A bar in the top-right shows the players current score, although that needs to be made much cooler looking. In addition to this, when the player gets a kill they receive pop ups on screen giving a full breakdown of the points they got and why. This is informative but also adds to the satisfaction of a great kill since it will reward you with a long list of modifiers.
As the project progresses I will continue to add more variables to reward players for performing more elaborate tricks, especially once I implement more weapon types.
For now though, the system is functional enough and the UI gives the player a clear and satisfying breakdown of where all their points are coming from, so I'm comfortable moving on to other aspects.
Next, I'm going to do a bit more work on our basic turret enemy like making it so they track with their head and weapon rather than whole body, more maybe just changing their anatomy so the whole-body tracking makes more sense. I'm also going to add a shorter range enemy type which chases the player, or maybe I will just combine the two and make the current enemy chase, we will have to see what works best in testing. I'm also going to give the enemies projectile weapons to allow the player more skill expression via dodging. If that works well I may even convert the player weapon over to a projectile system.
With all that core gameplay done I will then do preliminary audio-visual pass, adding art and sound assets. To avoid having to wrangle with animations too much I will probably keep things pretty minimalist so we can focus on the gameplay, but making the game more presentable and adding some VFX and SFX will certainly make things more satisfying.
Beyond that, I will construct a demo level, creating the full gameplay loop for the singleplayer mode. At this point the player will be able to play through a full level of the game against a variety of enemies, trying to maximise their score along the way and getting a grade at the end. They can then repeat this as many times as they like to see how high they can score.
Anyway, that's enough rambling about future plans, here is a video of the new score system in action:
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