Noscape Kiacity: Post-Jam Update 1.1

When I originally submitted “Noscape Kiacity” for the Nokia jam, I knew it was quite impenetrable, but I was quite proud of how many little systems I managed to slap together in such a short span of time, having never made anything like it before. And some of my favorite games are impenetrable, so who cares, right? “This game is made for the people who are willing to figure it out,” was the thinking.

But I started to regret my priorities when it dominated the feedback I got. “I can’t land my ship, I can’t even tell which way I’m going, the controls are impossible, I die immediately.” Okay, I admit it – the new player experience was a complete mess, and it was honestly very kind of some players to even attempt to figure it out, when the game does nothing to meet you halfway.

There’s a million features I could add, but I don’t have the intention of trying to expand this into a full game, especially under the Nokia constraints. Rather, my hope is only to make it easier for players to engage with the ideas that were already there (and maybe to introduce some of them to Escape Velocity). But I did add several things that I never originally had time for, like an actual shop interface, mission and event screens, and better AI.

I feel it’s a bit on the easy side now. Missiles are not really needed at all if you aren’t trying to fight by trading blows, but I would have worried more about that in a larger game that gradually pitted you against a variety of enemy ship types, from tiny interceptors to massive carriers with damage-reducing armor and energy shields, and so on. In the first place, I only added two types of weapons because I wanted to figure out the targeting systems for each of them, not because of a brilliant design goal. (Haha.)

This game was a bit of a new direction for me, as I usually tend to make absurd joke stuff rather than focusing on complex gameplay mechanics, which I don’t particularly have the skillset for. In this case I think I felt that making a complex systems game for Nokia phones was the absurdity, but then I also spent one or two full days simply trying to implement a infinite-scrolling star parallax effect, and nobody really notices that. The effort wasn’t commensurate with the reward. It was a fun challenge, but I’ll probably dumb it down next time. It’s easier to make a simple platformer and I’m kinda just in it to make people laugh.

Whether you played the original jam entry or not, I hope you’ll give it a try and let me know what you think. Thank you.

1.1 patch notes:

• Added some very basic cargo and target-destroying missions (no specific targets, no randomization).

  • Enemies are now only spawned in limited numbers when leaving Geohell or during missions.
  • Pause menu now has a mission section (left/right to switch), and new icons.

• Icon-based shop screen. Can now purchase upgrades non-linearly.

• Changed controls away from the ‘numpad block’ arrangement, less strictly forced to the Nokia keypad layout and more intuitive.

  • WASD movement has been moved to the arrow keys, classic Escape Velocity style.
  • Primary fire changed from C to space bar.
  • Auto-turn towards target has been changed from Q to A.
  • The Nokia 12-key limit is still enforced, and one must still for example use the modifier key for things like the afterburner.

• Increased player ship turn speed (125>180 degrees per second)

• Decreased ship’s max speed (80>40) and acceleration (25>20).

  • Player accelerates to top speed relatively faster to make it easier to correct for overshoots.

• Doubled maximum tolerated speed for landing on planets (2>4 pixels per second).

• Made the player ship larger and less symmetrical, to help read which way it is facing.

  • Player ship’s visual angle is now rounded (to the nearest 22.5 degrees of true orientation).
  • Restricting the ship to 1/16 turns reduces the “scrambled mosaic” effect that occurs while spinning due to low resolution.
  • Player ship jet engines now visible during regular thrust (and larger during use of afterburner).

• Turret fire rate reduced (10>5 particles per second), spray cone narrowed (30>20 degrees), increased enemy invuln cooldown (0.2>0.5).

• Enemy ships visually redesigned. (Sorry if you liked it when they looked like flying slices of pizza, but I didn’t.)

  • Making a ship look good in 12x12 pixels with only 2 colors, including the background, is kinda hard, okay?

• Enemies are now much smarter (still by no means geniuses) and tend to stay closer, for more frequent gunfire exchanges.

  • Slowed enemy top speed (40>38), allowing players to slowly widen the distance in a chase.
  • Enemies now turn against their own lateral momentum relative to their target, rather than falling into useless orbital patterns.
  • Enemies now slow down against a stationary target instead of accelerating and turning for pointless fly-bys.
  • Enemy ship projectile size increased (1x1>2x1), shot cooldown increased (2>4s), projectile duration decreased (8>6s).
  • Enemy projectiles are now influenced by the speed and direction of their source.
  • Previously they would fall behind when fired in the direction the ship is moving, such as during chases in a straight line.

• Title screen now does not create noise until input is received.

• Increased star parallax movement by 5x to provide more visual aid to player movement in empty space.

• Targeting icon revised slightly; now blinks, and is a symmetrical four dots at all times instead of rotating.

• More intuitive display of missile count in pause menu (Current/Max) and shop (Max>Upgraded). Now only shown if in possession of launcher.

• Fixed a bug where only one enemy could fire upon the player if multiple enemies’ attack cooldowns ended on the same tick.

• Some small fixes to targeting logic and text display (eg. “Target destroyed”).

• Fixed some cases of particles not being destroyed upon collisions or when landing the ship.