Level Design Part 16 - Building Progress Part 3

Since yesterday the level has been completely finished off in terms of enemies and sections. The gated sections are working really well and thankfully don't slow down the pace of the game. I decided that the doors can be destroyed if the player can hit it enough  and I'm enjoying the choice to either defend until the door opens or destroy it for more scrap. 

There are 2 new enemy types, to start with a knife wielding soldier that runs at the player and needs to get very close to attack. This enemy works well as fodder and spacing out the more difficult gun wielding enemies. I added them after looking at the games that inspired me and noticed that a lot of enemies either do very little or act as fodder for actual enemies. The second new enemy is interactive turrets that activate when the player is in the right area, initially they were just for the elevator but seeing their pods in a small room is very intimidating so I've placed them around the rest of the level to break up the soldier onslaught.

Other than that, a few small niggles in the boss and enemies have been ironed out. The pistol soldiers now shoot one bullet at a time instead of two, this just makes life easier in crowds of them. The enemies now are always in the combat state and are spawned ahead or behind of the player instead of being persistent on the level. This method is working much better because the enemies are always in the right place instead of wandering around the level. In hindsight, they should have never had an idle state and it was a waste of time setting that part of their AI up. 

Next, I've added lots of minor scrap pick ups throughout the level, this is because some areas felt quite bare. This is the same reason crash bandicoot introduced wumpa fruit, it just makes the level feel more full and rewarding even if it is a minor thing.

Finally, arguably the most important part, I have created a checkpoint system (Currently Lily only) and each of these checkpoints offers the player lives for scrap, much like the garage for the tank. It's definitely useful, I've even been using it when testing the game and fighting the boss. Dying now feels a lot less punishing which is great! The 5 lives are stretched really thin so having points where the player can reset from or spend their scrap for lives makes it so I can keep the difficulty high, but not force the player go through everything again to attempt the section again.