Space Character

Developers
Designer(s): Radu Teodosescu

What is this feature?
The player can navigate through space, avoiding hazards and projectiles and positioning himself in an advantageous position to strike at ship weak points by shooting at them.

Why do we have this feature?
As the main mechanic of the space combat and traversal. It creates dynamics of dodging, positioning and shooting.

Design Pillars | How should it be designed?

 * 1) Spacey - The movement needs to give the impression of flying through space with the appropriate floatiness.
 * 2) Responsive - The player needs to be able to adequately respond to changes in the gameplay space and readjust their trajectory according to their mental model.
 * 3) Attack Runs - Incentivise the player to do attack runs on the enemy ship where he waits for the appropriate attack window and fires when on approach, like a fighter plane.
 * 4) Fits Visuals - Is congruous with the space ship visuals. It moves in a way that makes sense for how it looks.

Turning
The player turns the ship towards one of 8 directions using WASD. The shortest turn is immediately calculated and executed. The turn rate is dictated by the speed to create more elliptical turns.

Speed
The player has a minimum and a maximum speed. The more the player travels in a given direction for longer, the more the speed increases. Deceleration happens when you input a movement direction that you aren't currently traveling in or when you aren't inputting a movement direction.

Shooting
Similar to on-foot gameplay, players can maneuver around and shoot at enemies in space. Their weapon while in space is a laser base hit-scan weapon that is:
 * Has a limited range.
 * Shoot in the general direction of the mouse.
 * Has its own rate of fire and damage point, which can be adjusted to balance the damage the laser cause per second.