I've implemented a round of changes that address many of the feedback notes on the first version and these changes make up version 0.2.0.
The strongest and most common piece of feedback was that the performance was bad to the point of being unplayable on certain computers. I've implemented a round of optimizations as well as quality options which should help. I used a lower-capability laptop to test these performance changes and got the following results:
- 0.1.0 Baseline - 45 fps
- 0.2.0 Very High Quality - 50 fps
- 0.2.0 High Quality - 70 fps
- 0.2.0 Medium Quality - 75 fps
- 0.2.0 Low Quality - 82 fps
- 0.2.0 Very Low Quality - 90 fps
I've set medium as the default quality level but this can be changed in settings. I'm not done optimizing, I can still do a lot better, but I think this should be a good first step that hopefully will take the game out of unplayable performance territory for many users.
The second set of changes were around the player control. I've tightened it up to be less slippery and floaty which hopefully will feel more responsive. In addition, I've replaced the timing parry attack with a simpler attack at the bottom of your feet that always fires on double jump which should be more intuitive to play with.
I also completely reworked the tutorial. The previous tutorial was horizontal rather than vertical which wasn't representative of the main game. It also included some very precise jumps that probably shouldn't have been in the tutorial that now have been replaced by using a main normal level as the tutorial base.
The last round of changes were around enemies. I got feedback that there was a bit too much going on at once and its hard to keep track of things, so I've reduced the enemy count but increased the enemy size. This should also have minor performance benefits. In addition, I've added more warnings to enemies and enemy spawners. Enemy spawners will flash right before an enemy comes out so it doesn't feel like you unfairly got hit by a new enemy out of nowhere. Burrowers and mushrooms also now do a warning before they shoot to make dodging that more fair.
Thanks for all your feedback, my primary concern with this round of changes was addressing as many of the notes raised in feedback as possible. There's still a lot of work left to do, but I'm happy to get this first update out to you folks.
If you want to try out these new changes, the game can be found here.