"Micro" update version 9 and some game design thoughts

Level 0 is getting re-designed so it's now broken again.

Also when you die or run out time(in the timed modes) you now get a nice BIG text message telling you if you died or ran out of time.

Jellyfish have gotten some balance tweaks as previously the only way to kill them was explosives and IMO that just got really boring and repetitive. One of the issues with the Jelly fish is that I do want them to simultaneously be tanky enough that killing them one at a time as they spawn in is a waste of time but I do want it to be possible to clear them out with the rocket launchers altfire when they get too oppressive. 

In other news the special rocket is now back to the old behaviour of detonating on contact with the energy shields. So that's a nerf. On the other hand the when pierced the special rocket detonates on shields making it actually way more effective at killing groups of shielded enemies as it will detonate every single time it hits a new shield. So basically close range nuking shield enemies is out. Piercing rockets are in.

The health pickup is probably gonna end up with  visuals based on the yellow checkpoint in the race mode. I like the idea that in both the combat and the race modes the yellow cube things are good for you and the yellow color shouldn't overlap with anything else. I really don't want to make the health green as IMO that just makes the game too colorful and I kinda like the idea of keeping the color palette limited.

The shield mod for the capsule enemies currently always applies a 50% health buff. This will get changed to be adjustable so that the blender enemies don't have like 600HP with shields as that makes them way too annoying.

Toying with the idea of a regenerator Jellyfish also a "crown of thorns" Jelly fish

I kinda want some kind of enemy that really forces you to come in close to do damage and then get out before it hits you. I might just make this a modifyer for the capsule enemies.

I have a fat  "nuclear" shark missile model that IDK what to do with. 

I want some kind of flying + shooting enemy.

Tutorial level progress:
I'm realizing that making a tutorial for this game is kinda awkward. Most games would just tell you here's a how to move and here's how to shoot. But in this game "how to move" is extremely closely tied to how to shoot. Like for example there's 3 different "types" of rocket jumps. Sure there's the basic just point the rocket launcher down and jump and that works well enough but because explosion push back stacks overloading the rocketlauncher actually launches you higher. Also with double jumping I think you're actually better off spaming the space bar rather than trying to time the second jump for extra heigh as jumps are just a += term. So you get more vertical speed the faster you double jump(and yes the double jump does stack with the rocket knock back). Anyway the final type of rocket jumping is using the blast from a special rocket triggered by a regular rocket. This launches the player by far the hardest of any of the rocket jumps at the cost of being more work to setup. Then off course there's the fact that both the shotgun and machigun have push back recoil making for another way to jump higher/move faster. Which leaves me kinda wondering how do I introduce all this because IMO playing this game without being aware of the "advance" movement is just not fun.

And then there's there's the shooting. How the pierce of the machinegun works. How the pierce of the rocketlauncher works. How different enemies have different resistances(mainly large enemies have heaps of shotgun resistance or the shotgun would kill them way too fast even at long ranges). How regenerator enemies work. How the shields work. How spirirts work.

In other words there has been 0 progress on the tutorial.

Future map ideas:

Pipes: I kinda like the idea of a level that's just a bunch of tubes floating in space with enemies spawning inside them and the player has to basically fly in and out of them. 

Wall:The center of the level would be a wall with a bunch of smallish holes through it that the player darts through side to side to gather kills/takecover/get health.

Grid "maze": not actually a maze. I just want something more claustrophobic than the current wide open levels I have in the game. This would just a bunch of blocks with passages between them. Kinda like the server room level in Severed Steel but less open.

Split mountain: 2 cones with a gap down the middle. I think this would just look cool not really sure how I'd make it playable.