Having a game with a great concept, even with awesome graphics, is nothing if you can’t make it enjoyable and that is done by how the player controls the game. It’s hard to get it right and that what I’m up against right now.

On my previous post, I was wondering if the game is good enough for me to continue working on it. I was working with assets I drew by hand or I got from some free assets sites, it was looking horrible but I thought it will be enough to check the idea. I still don’t feel 100% sure if the game is fun because I’m playing alone and the big fun is with other players. I could work on adding some bots, and I’m sure I will do it down the road, but to actually feel how is it I need to test it with some people.

Before I start testing the initial concept I will need to work on the graphics and the controls. On my previous attempt at building and publishing games, I thought about re-making the old PC game Round42 that I loved as a kid. At that time I worked closely with a talented artist I mentioned in my first post that helped me with the graphics for this game, I called it Blast55. The art style was 2D (of course) low poly, top-down view. I never published the game although it was 95% finished. Because my other games were not successful I felt like I don’t have a chance with this one and it’s not worth the work and money I will need to publish it.

So luckily I still have all the assets and I thought it will be a good idea not to throw them away and use it in this new game, if not just for testing maybe use it as in the final product.

Now I need to handle the controls.

I still have some work regarding the movement of the ship, making it smoother when it rotates so maybe you’ll see some glitches or slowness here and there, that will be solved soon. What I wonder is how to handle the attack control.

In the current version I have a fire button that the user can touch and then the ship will start firing, and when the user releases the button the firing stops. There will be a different kind of weapons but for now, it’s just a straight shot.

The shot always comes from the front of the ship, and the player controls the rotation of the ship so we have rotation controller and a fire button. Because the player is always moving I’m starting to think the not being able to control the gun positioning might be bad because it will make it hard to hit. I’m thinking of replacing the fire button with a control similar to the movement controller so you’ll have one to handle the direction of the ship and one to handle the direction of the weapon. I saw it in Inferno 2 and it might be a good solution. Maybe the continuous movement is also not that good, and I need to change it too by making the player move just when touching the control.

I would love to hear your thoughts: Is continues movement a good thing? Will a different controller for shooting get things complicated?