Version 0.2.0 out

This seems to be my game dev cycle: Abandon the project for weeks or months at a time, then come back with a ton of ambition and excitement. Eventually, I'll burn myself out again, but I think I'm not there yet.

It might not look much different, but there have been quite a few updates, including some optimizations to improve the framerate, which was suffering at times. I foolishly mis/over-used OnTriggerStay in multiple ways, early on in the project. Fixing that alone was significant.

Let's get into the main updates:

Sentry Turrets

These are guns that shoot at enemy ships that come too close. They add some much-needed action to the game, which is otherwise, rather slow-paced.

There is one for each of the main weapon types: Ballistic, plasmic, explosive, and electric. If you fly up to an inactive sentry, you can "claim" it by pressing the interact button in exchange for some AP. They spawn into the map in varying quantities, and will sometimes begin in a "rogue" state; shooting at any ships that come near, regardless of their team.

Mother Ship (re-worked)

With the sentry guns built, there was no reason not to do something I had considered for a long time: Try to make the Mother Ship area into more of a base. So, Mother Ships will always spawn with one sentry of each type positioned around them.

This also presented an opporunity to replace the Mother Ship's lame Ability (which was "Restock Fleet"-- giving each ship on your team one point of ammo for each of their weapons). Instead, you can now re-build any of the sentries that have been destroyed from your starting four.

I never liked that the Mother Ship's secondary fire was a plasmic weapon-- as a special ship, I don't think it should favour any single weapon type. Again, I just wasn't sure what else to do with it. The Mother Ship primarily existed as a secondary path to victory; it's functions as a ship were somewhat vague. Fortunately, I was able to come up with a simple replacement for this attack: Repair AOE-- self-explanatory, I think. Previously, this was a passive effect of the Mother Ship which kicked in at the start of each turn. I much prefer it this way.

There are still some more things I want to do with the Mother Ship, especially in regards to the "Victory Points" option, as well as a replacement for the Super Nova attack. Those things will come later.

QOL: OnEquip HUD

This is the first of several planned QOL updates. When you select a weapon/ability, you'll get a pop-up showing the weapon's icon, name, type, ammo, and AP cost. This info was all on your dashboard, but I want to cut down on the dashboard as much as possible.

Without this, the Mother Ship's new ability wouldn't work as nicely-- you can press the "equip ability" button multiple times to cycle through each sentry to get the one you want. It's important to be able to see them all clearly to understand how it works.

Music

I remember the first time I added music to my last game, CATACLYSM. I couldn't believe what a huge difference it made in the energy that the game carried. I finally did the same for MicroCosmic, and it took no time to find a suitable track from Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com). I may replace the track with another one if my friend comes up with something for me, but more likely, I'll keep it as an alternative. It was written for a bullet-hell game, which is kind of funny as I think it suits the methodical pace of my game better. Maybe I'd understand if I saw the full context. Anyways, it's a great little track.

Sound Effects

There are only a handful of new sounds, but I'm quite happy with them. The laser sound was made with my wife's guitar, and the raygun is the same clip with some effects layered on it.

The video shows a few other little additions/changes. Try the game out, even just paying both sides, against yourself, and you can explore the various ships and their interactions with each other and the environment.

Game link is right here (Web GL and Windows download): https://moonjellygames.itch.io/microcosmic