The Problem

Players have been playing our game, and a lot of them noticed that mouse controls feel off. Some offered to use WASD or arrow keys instead. However, there were also a lot of players (us included), who liked the mouse controls, but thought that its implementation could use some improvement.

The Solution

We listened to the feedback from our players and decided that a bug fix is needed. According to the rules of Ludum Dare, "Certain Bug Fixes are allowed. You can’t add new features, but if something broke or didn’t work correctly as you were finishing up, you can fix this after the deadline." So that's what we did!

The problem, of course, lied in inexperience with Godot. Here is how character's movement direction was determined:

To be honest, looking back, I was impressed that this code even existed and somehow worked, as those mistakes are quite basic: + using local position for the player, when cursor's position is global + abs, when using vectors, doesn't get it's length - it just makes its components positive + somehow we compare abs vector to just vector; such behavior could be very unpredictable

The fix was simple:

I also used the global position of collision shape to make it more precise, as character sprite is not centered.

Conclusions made

• it's certainly useful to look back at your old code and revise it, you may not even remember what you wrote previously
• playtesting is essential for making your game enjoyable: remove the problems before anyone can see them!
• player feedback is very helpful to make the experience for new playes more enjoyable, so it's really important to learn how to listen to it and interpret what the game needs

Those may be basic, but everyone comes to them at some point and it's not so easy to actually acknowledge them. So, now you can enjoy our game better then ever before!

About the game

Akino’s Dungeon is a challenging, addictingly fun top-down arcade where you'll have to dodge and maneuver to kill enemies with the help of your orbital familiars. Pick skulls, summon familiars and feed Akino! Check our game out on our page, link here!