Since the last devlog entry, I've decided to keep working on Turnament without taking notes for a devlog entry and really focus on remaking levels. I've now reached level 25, only 5 more to go.

Here is the old level 25:

Here's the remastered version:

I updated a bunch of small details along the way. One of those was the game over screen, on which the objects now explode from the position where your seeker has died.

Also, some maps use a lot of projectiles, sometimes 100 or more, and that means that there are 100+ Animators in one scene. I looked up what the best solution to something like this is and decided to remove all Animators for each projectile/drone. They need to rotate continually and I thought an Animator was a quick and easy way to solve this, but it is actually better for performance to do it in one function in one FixedUpdate, which loops through all projectiles and sets the rotation with:

transform.Rotate(0, 0, 0 - Time.deltaTime * projectile_rotation_speed);

Which also lets me change the rotation speed for a cool slowdown effect on the "winning screen" and animate individual highlights for each of the little red circles. I don't know if having individual circle sprites actually decreases performance again, but we'll see when it's time to run it on my older laptop.

Speaking of the winning screen, I finally started making the new UI. This was a crucial part that I've been postponing for a while now, so I'm really happy I have something that I can work with now. (As always, starting is the hard part.) Here is the new winning screen in action, complete with a new button (which already works with mouse/keyboard and controller):

These small functionalities always take more time than you'd think. I once again wrote a menu script which I will be able to use for all other menus (splash screen, dialogue buttons (next, skip), and maybe even pause menu and options). The Catty & Batty menu just wasn't generic enough, but I learned a lot with it and can still repurpose some of the old menu functions.

I've also played through the whole game (so far) with a controller and I can say that in certain parts it's definitely harder than with mouse and keyboard. I'm not entirely sure how to improve on that, but... I may need to move the "turning ability" to a dedicated button. Right now you always need to deselect a seeker to turn a grid square, and a lot of times it would be helpful to keep a seeker selected and still be able to turn. At least for controller.

For mouse and keyboard, you can already press "space" to re-select your last seeker (there's a button on controller as well), and use 1-9 for quick selection, which helps a lot.

More playtesting (and a demo!) will definitely shed some light on that.

Speaking of the demo, I've slowly come to the conclusion that I won't be able to participate in the Steam Next Fest in February. The new collab EP "Desdemona" is coming out in February, and I will (hopefully) also receive the cover art for Still Leben at around the same time, and I want to release that as soon as possible.

I'm now targeting the Next Fest in June 2022, it sounds a lot more doable and less stressful, which is good for my body.

And speaking of next year...

Thank you for reading these devlog entries in 2021! I'm always interested to hear what you think of these articles, so let me know in the comments. There's lots of exciting stuff on the horizon, including a demo, new music, and more. So I hope you're ready to read more of these entries next year!

To be continued...