I’ve been tinkering with Orbital Billiards yet again. I’ve tweaked a lot of little things in an attempt to give the UI more precision. It’s an inherently difficult game, so I want to give the player every advantage I can think of.
The changes are:
- The prediction line now shows the extent of the cue ball, rather than just its centreline. Now it’s much easier to judge the angle of a shot that isn’t straight.
- The globe surface is now marked with lines that indicate the direction of the nearest hole.
- Scoring has been revamped to reward runs where several balls of the same colour are sunk. Each colour has a score multiplier which is raised by sinking balls of that colour.
- The shot power meter has markings that indicate how many degrees around the globe the cue ball will travel before coasting to a stop.
- The camera FOV is much narrower. This should make it easier to judge angles on the reverse side of the globe.
- I’ve capped the fullscreen frame rate to 60FPS. This should prevent laptop owners scorching their laps!
- When you sink a ball, you’ll see it fall to the centre of the globe. It’s cosmetic, but satisfying.
- I’ve modelled the pockets instead of using a plain sphere with pitch black triggers attached. I’ve violated my design constraint of only using perfect spheres!