Check out our Trailer: Youtu.be
As part of our final iteration on the game, we have made many minor and small adjustments to juice, balance, and polish throughout the game, as well as significant bugfixing, in order to make it a more complete and whole product.
These new changes include:
- Significant balancing fixes and adjustments to the game:
- Player turning speed and maneuverability increased
- Cannon reload rate increased
- Player healing rate decreased
- Enemies shoot more often
- Shop prices adjusted to let player progress easier throughout the game
- Overall damage and health balancing
- Additional aesthetic changes
- Changing all the font in game from default font
- Cosmetic changes to islands throughout the game
- Addition of a level select theme
- Recoloring of all enemies to be a consistent shade of red
- Adding the wood texture to some hint boxes
- Synchronized the wake speed and water animation on the title screen
- Indicators are smaller as to not take up too much of the combat screen
- More "yarr" SFX included in the game
- Adjusted ironclad texture to more clearly indicate which side is the front
- Made the "hurt" effect on damage scale to intensity of damage
- Addition of cutscenes to explain why the player lost a level
- Player and enemies now have low health indication in the form of a red/green flashing healthbar on 1/3 health
- Adjusted the layout of the tutorial to be more clear and easier for the player
- Gave player additional indicators for nearby ports, objectives, boss, etc.
- Reworked some encounters such that the player is not immediately under attack when starting a level
Bug Fixes:
- Quit button's clickable area now no longer takes up half of the screen
- User should no longer be able to "double-kill" an enemy with simultaneous hits
- Adjusted victory conditions on some levels to avoid softlocking by going into negative ships
- Flame and cannon SFX properly start and cut off when activated and deactivated
- Arrow keys now don't simultaneously fire a cannonball AND turn the ship
- Torpedoes can now no longer travel through land
- Enemies should no longer fire at player when not within a reasonable range
- Removed the chance that the player gets stuck against the final boss
- Fixed port colliders such that the player and enemy are not able to "hide" within the port and shoot at it
- Adjustments to screen transitions
- Adjusted UI throughout the game to be more consistent throughout
- Store should now accept purchases if you have equal or more the amount, not strictly more
The reason we included many of these changes is because we were fast approaching the game's completion, and we wanted to create the best looking and best functioning product that we could. Thus, almost all of our significant changes this week either involved polish, bug-fixing, or game balancing. We did significant amounts of work adjusting the difficulty curve of the game, namely rearranging the layouts and designs of some encounters, as well as doing numerous balancing sweeps of ships throughout the game. We've also finally tackled some long needed player maneuverability and combat adjustments, so combat should feel much more smooth and natural. Other than that, we have finally integrated all the graphics and sound that we would like to see in the game, and polished it to a fine degree.
If we were to continue development on this game, potential additions include the addition of more encounters, as well as the reintroduction of a faction relations system such that the player could balance their relations between the Empire and pirates.
However, for now, we are done with Troubled Waters. I hope all of you enjoy our game.
Happy sailing!
