Time Ranger
Time Ranger DevLog #2: RELOAD!
Time Ranger: The First Update!
Hello! Bill here again! Nuno is taking a little break to forget the joyous sensation of a good nights sleep.
For good reason, because Player 4 has arrived in his household! MASSIVE congratulations!
Even with that wonderful life changing event, we still released an update!
Lets not waste any time and just get straight into it! What's new?!
New Mechanic: Ricochets
You can now shoot enemy bullets and send them right back at an enemy for bonus damage!
It's a bit tricky but it's cool hell when you pull it off.
This is a first implementation, but the goal here is to build in a new risk x reward element for those in pursuit of new best times.
We have exciting (ambitious) plans for this system. It's going to be pretty fun to further integrate into combat, particularly boss fights for more interesting encounters, so stay tuned for that in a future update.
More destructibles: Bottles n stuff
You wanted it, you got it! We've got some more destructible elements throughout the level.
Theres bottles, and windows and other stuff I've probably forgotten.
We briefly had destructible barrels in there, but they turned into fountains of fragments, so they had to go (you can see some dumb gifs on our socials of how that went.) We'll figure it out one day...
Improved Enemy Feedback: Ragdolls
It's now tremendously more satisfying to blast enemies. They get knocked back with force (it's up for debate if the force is too great), and ragdoll down to the ground. No more fixed animations for death.
New Guns: Fancy Revolvers
Got some new guns in, and they look lovely!
Art Style & Lighting Improvements: Now in technicolor!
We know it all looked a bit dull and washed out in the first release. So we spent some time trying to make some improvements.
I'd like everyone to appreciate this, as neither of us are artists, but we think it's an improvement, but it can still be better!
Run Setup & Settings: in the Main Menu
You can now configure the experience before you jump into gameplay! These visibly were here before, but they work now! (Thanks, Nuno!)
- Pistols: Dual Wielding (default), Left Hand only, Right Hand only
- Reloading: You can now enable reloading for an added challenge
- The pistols automatically reload after firing x6 shots
- With a magnificent little animation that Nuno put together.
- The pistols automatically reload after firing x6 shots
- Health: x5, x3, x1 health configurations to tweak your challenge
- Vignette: You can disable the vignette when moving
- We added this to assist with motion sickness, but you can turn it off it you like.
Wrists: Health & Timer
Made some visual tweaks to the positioning of this information
So you can see it even while aiming, rather than having to look at it like a watch.
ACTION!: Feels good
You'll now get visual and audible feedback when you've cleared a Section, and when a new Section starts
Upon Section completion you'll see CLEAR, plus a SFX cue, then WAIT until you're done moving to the next Section.
When the next Section starts you'll see ACTION! and as the lightgun veterans would rightly expect, a voice will shout it too!
Gameplay Footage: Finally!
After a lot of faffing about, we've got a better way to record gameplay footage, it's a massive weight off, and less of a hassle to edit too. This doesn't really change anything in the game, but I'm so very happy about it, so it gets an entry in the DevLog!
Planning ahead: The Bigger Picture
There are some little tweaks here and there that are paving (and teasing) the way to the larger experience.
We want to have some interconnectivity between levels. A fun narrative framework, with a thread that runs through levels.
Teasing what might come next in fun areas throughout the level.
You'll notice some enemies may have changed, that is part of this.
If you look closely at one in particular you might figure out where we're going next for Level 2...
Also! There is a newly added cliffhanger after the boss fight!
Between polish, I've been chipping away at the fountation of Level 2, it'll hopefully come together pretty quickly now that this update is out in the wild!
Shouting about it!: The Marketing Machine!
We need to start promoting this thing better. So we're using our socials to share updates while we're working away on it.
It's still early days, but if you wana see some dumb stuff and get some early teases to upcoming content, we'd appreciate the follows, likes, redoots, high fives and everything.
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