Various responses:
1. Glad that people are happy with the mechs.
We do plan on adding legs to a variety of enemies as well, and having a mix of hovering and walking ones. Just have not had time yet on that one, and it's a fairly minor detail compared to the player stuff.
2. The pushback when you are firing your guns is indeed intentionally pushing you back. However, that may no longer be needed because we are going to be adding a recoil animation to the guns themselves. So that will give the sense of weight and pushback without actually needing to push you back. Thoughts there?
3. The mech art is super temporary, I should remind you. It was stuff I cobbled together from IGB to test out sizing and general feel, not actual art done in the proper style of the game. Except for the feet -- those were done by Blue for the actual game.
4. The laser coming out of your mech's inactive gun is a laser sight. If it's confusing I can turn it off, but it is the place that either your missiles or your special weapon will fire from. I figure it's a good guide so that you don't blow yourself up (plus it looks cool).
5. In terms of some enemies being to crazy sometimes, Misery, I think that's not an indictment of the categories system -- but rather, an indicator that some new categories are needed. No big thing. If there are certain enemies that you have that you would like to see used only in certain ways, and we can make a new category out of that, then let's definitely go for it.
6. I'll check on the glass pots.
7. Most of the new enemies don't have actual art assigned right now, I should also mention to folks. We have a huuuuge amount of art completed, but I haven't had a chance to integrate it yet for these guys. I was out of the office all last week.
8. Now I have commentary that is conflicting: we need longer-range guns, and we need shorter-range guns.
Honestly, I feel like shorter-range guns are the order of the day, and then grow up from there. I agree that something like 10% is not a good addition. Instead we should do something that is actual distance-based, like "add 100px to shot range."
8.a. In terms of enemies that have spreadshots that are too dense... well, that's pretty much just bosses. I guess we either need to make those lower-floors-only, or provide holes, etc. In general I don't want to be sniping enemies from way far away, because that is far too easy and boring. I want to be having to move into mid-range, where the big fun is. Too far away and it's too easy. Too close and there's not time to react to stuff that is emitting. Some of the bosses are holding me just too far away from themselves at the moment. Possibly simply making it so that their initial shots come out of them from slightly further back on their bodies would fix that completely, to be honest. We can make visible guns on them and put those further back on the boss so that it visually makes sense.
9. Mantis is all kinds of buggered. I'm working on it.
10. Understood on the narrative issues.
11. I like the idea of surfaces that do various things -- very nice.
12. The shift to mechs might seem like a drastic change, but the core thing was that it was a paradox before: I wanted it to move like a mech but look like a ship. Other people saw it looked like a ship and felt like it was buggy/cheap when it didn't fly like a ship. I never wanted it to move like that, honestly. So this gets back to the original way I wanted it to move, but without people complaining it seems cheap, hopefully.
13. Points taken on the weapon switching, but we're kind of out of room there. There may be something better we can do, but I'm not certain yet.
