Saturday @ Second Half #7 — Maximum Payne
Happy Saturday — it's time for some news about MEANWHILE IN SECTOR 80!
Last week, we gained new enemies and some pretty new graphics features.
This week, we landed a controls and equipment overhaul and started exploring our first real level, The Dry Dam.
You've Gotta Build Yourself— Lucien
YOU ARE NOW THE WEAPON.
This week we threw away the concept of the multi-tool in favor of building directly onto your robot body. You can bind switches to any mouse button or keyboard key, which has opened up a ton of new options!
It's also fixed one of our core problems: scaling combat beyond a single weapon. Now that you can dual-wield and power everything directly from your body, getting more powerful is much more straightforward.
Dry Dam— Laura
As we're moving into working on a real level, I've started to block out and concept the DRY DAM and the surrounding environment!
Switch Variants— Rasmus
Switches are now available in more shapes and sizes for creativity and convenience.
Finding the right switches can make your contraptions more compact and lighter, allowing for faster movement and more loot to be carried!
McBunker Glow-Up and Overview— Harry
Hello, obedient citizens of the Second Half Games Newsletter!
Laura has given us a beautiful collection of rocks and rock materials, which lets us easily create varied landscape features. This also means The Dreaded McBunker's surface entrance has had a bit of a makeover. This gorgeous 20 bedroom 47 bathroom property in the formerly-lush Great Misery Basin comes bundled with its own array of automated defences and air conditioning. It could be yours for only 999,999,999,999,999 credits, or for a bargain with the careful use of illegal firearms and an adventurous spirit, you sly robot you.
Speaking of firearms - what good is a weapon if you don't know the damage you're doing with it? As part of our continued overhaul of combat, Lucien's been hard at work making weapon feedback feel more tangible. Parts hit by weapons now produce sparks proportional to the damage received, with broken parts now glowing yellow - highlighting that they are ripe to be pilfered and repaired aboard your ship.
Don't want to destroy those adorable little crab robots? Take out their weapons module and you've made a new friend that'll follow you around the rest of the map to your heart's content.
(editor's note: I have stolen the video that Harry made for this section because it was way better than my video. I wield my absolute editorial control with extreme violence.)
Spaghetti meatballs for dinner.
Be good!
Looking Ahead
We ran another weekly playtest on Friday! It was an mixed bag — some things got so much better that it uncovered a bunch of other things that we aren't doing so well yet. That was a little tough to process but it's important to remember that this is how game development goes. If all of our playtests were fantastic, we probably aren't learning anything, right?
I think we'll be slowing down our internal playtesting pace to once every two weeks. We're also looking forward to scheduling our first Friends and Family playtest in 6-8 weeks.
See you all next week!