General Gameplay

I have a lot of stuff to share. Although I told you turn based combat is a super cool add on, after reading this post I felt an urgent need to inform you that it is a counter intuitive solution for keeping the player engaged given the game's current state: As you mentioned above, the graphics and story are 11/10. But the gameplay is nothing special (yet). You need some interesting mechanics to keep the player engaged such as layers (psudo 3D environment meaning the z axis would only be 3 cells wide) because it would allow for more dynamic combat and keep the player on their toes because currently there is no way to avoid damage which makes the already slow gameplay incredibly linear. It's really just a numbers game. Critical hits and a stealth mechanic are a must because that implements strategic diversity. For example, it would be better to use stealth 1v1 in order to avoid damage but stealth instead of an automatic rifle 1v5 is suicide. Criticals prevent the player from spraying and praying, and could even be a factor in ai if you go far enough to make difficulty settings. Ultimately any sort of combat enhancement would would prevent the player from walking around with nothing but an automatic rifle. Tactical mode would bring you back to square one even if you could find a meaningful way to incorporate the mechanics I described. For example, you could have a randomizer that determines whether a bullet hits normally, critically, or misses, but to me that sort of critical hit is not nearly as rewarding as high risk high reward gameplay such as aiming for that smaller target of the head and pulling it off! Even if you were to add a mechanic like bullet physics and hit people out of view in tactical mode it would be so slow and aggravating that by the time one pulls it off the frustration would exceed the reward. The only way tactical mode would be fun is if you made something like XCOM, Sonny, or Adventure Quest with elaborate classes and damage types. This would work because these features would be worse in real-time mode because no one wants to go through the hassle of pressing the hot key/open inventory to switch their weapon to one that does "siege damage" so that you can deal more damage to reptiles all while being shot at. (2d world of Warcraft would be horrendous).

Your game has infinite potential because of its uniqueness. I just want to make sure you're fully aware of the decisions you are about to make and problems that you may encounter with each approach (real-time vs tactical).
-Connor

Those are really good points, I've also been wondering if being able to pause and tactically plan things takes away from the general feel of the game

Critical hits is something that can be implemented actually pretty quick (did about half the work getting cover to function), though the pseudo3D could be tricky, not sure yet how to handle floors etc with the parallax effect

The cover system right now should allow for the player to find a way to hide behind things, just thinking of making it so a player has to be crouched behind said cover to use it and if covered stand to fire, make things a bit more dynamic. AI wise, right now I'm not sure the AIs know how to use the cover well (they don't try to reach cover, they just keep their head down if they happen to be shooting from a covered location

Question, the cover seems a bit super powerful (just sit behind it and spray = victory), what if it just reduced the odds of getting hit, so you can't camp behind stuff? Better odds of protection if crouched (at cost of mobility). Think that mechanic might add to things?

I can also put in a super high damage sneak attack and slow down the AI's random search light, just to give more time for the player to get close

Thanks for the input, this is what we need to keep things on track

got the game to work in a exe and got auto cavis re sizing!!!!! ==> imgur.com/XVI8WfY

imgur.com/5hRENK7 <== working great

stopped stretching in the icon ^-^ ==> imgur.com/sVRa7rM