Re: Scrolling Battles Pro
I'm really liking most of these new changes, especially mines, the fixing of fall sounds on higher platforms, and the additional map framework.
However, there are still a handful of outstanding issues that I see as slowing SBP's progress significantly if they aren't addressed, ones that I've mentioned before and have probably been berried farther back in this topic.
Some were there from the start, others have been introduced in updates, but I believe that if they aren't dealt with soon then they will eventually become the pillars of sand that will cause this project to collapse.
I might be over reacting, but I've seen this play out before several times, both in private and commercial projects, where the team doesn't want to deal with underlying issues with the product, in favor of adding exciting new features, which makes them feel like something is being accomplished in the short term, but in the end, the problems pile up and dest
roy the usability of it.
That isn't to say that keeping your motivation going is bad for the coder, or the user for that matter, but without a proper balance of creativity and problem solving, and without tackling the tough ones along the way, you'll only end up drastically shortening the lifespan of your game.
Here is a list of those things that I find most relevant to this in general order of more important to less important, for reference:
1. The inability to clear data reliably, and the inability to do it manually either. This makes the game, frankly, not fun, after only a short period of time.
2. Massive lag when AI's fight each other, usually around the waterfall. This causes the game to be frustrating and nearly unplayable.
3. Huge amounts of items, with no hard limit on how many can be on the map at one time, or how fast they show up. This causes players to become virtually invincible, without an accompanying sense o
f accomplishment.
4. A lack of reasonable limits on things like glider fuel, TOBD range, and health. This is bad for reasons that I think would be obvious.
5. Allies should be far fewer in ratio to enemies than they are now. This makes things allot more interesting for the player.
6. Enemy AI's follow you to such a degree that they literally keep pace with you, and sometimes can't even be pealed away with a glider, yet don't even fire at you until you get at least 1 square away from them. This just does not make sense, and makes fighting considerably less fun.
7. Fires that make no noise but still hurt you seem to show up about 1 out of 3 times that one is started. These invisible fires take a large amount of damage, just like regular fires, but can not be avoided.
8. As stated in the Readme, time bombs have a range of about 300 tiles. I know why this is, so that your enemy hopefully can't get away in time, but that just isn&#
039;t how most people use them, since the timer is so long anyway, so I suggest reducing the range to about 50 tiles and drastically reducing the countdown timer, to about 5 seconds, which would make them more fun anyway.
9. No damage taken when falling from heights. What is the point of platforms that you can't get hurt falling off of?
10. Your fists again seem to reach out as far as you can see, which is ridiculous, and not only that but they destroy multiple items in the way, like a blast wave. Even though this feels freaking awesome, it also makes that weapon so overpowered as to be nearly useless.
11. A lack of weapons and sounds for the current ones. While these current weapons are fun, they also end up having to fill too many gaps that could be filled by other weapons, E.G. the machine gun's overly long range, which when coupled with it's automatic fire is a bit over powered, the large difference in range between your fists and that o
f the first ranged weapon resulting in the recent compensation speed VS power, the small over all difference between the laser and handgun, with nothing more damaging and of less range to fill them out, ETC: and while the current sounds are nice, they are also brief and rather lifeless for the most part, E.G. the grenade launcher's and handgun's reloading sounds.
I really, really hope that most of these get fixed within the next 2 or 3 updates, otherwise, I think that this idea may quickly lose momentum with people, which would be a big shame.
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