Now that I have (at least) solved my personally biggest gripe about Goldwingu, I’ll concentrate on something that is slightly more embarrassing from a game design point-of-view but slightly less embarrassing from a programmers point-of-view; balancing and rhythm.
As it stands now, Goldwingu has almost no rhythm to it. Balancing is purely just adding more stuff until the player or his machine croaks. The games needs to have rhythm to itself within a level and between levels. On the latter I’ve thought about adding a special level every 5 levels that really just offers a short breather and bonus points (and maybe a chance to calibrate your weapons).
Within a level I think the rhythm should be rising. It starts out slow and builds up, first slowly. On later levels the build up would reach absurd levels, dying down shortly before the end. I wouldn’t put it past me that a level might contain a number of these build ups all within one bigger build up. Done like this, the problem will seem almost trivial. I have a bad feeling this won’t be the case for real though. At least the order of the enemies (and shuffling of) will need thinking.
Balancing is, thanks to the many factors involved, slightly less trivial to solve. So far I’ve made the following choices:
- I made the first enemy and its bullets faster and more numerous.
- The difference between players ships speeds isn’t uneven. Currently the relative speeds are: 0.004, 0.016, 0.032. I just know I’ll get sleepless nights over this…
Part of the balancing is also the rewards, which includes the blessed explosions, plenty to tinker there. Also coming up are achievements or medals, which will provide a way to get better weaponry and equipment.