Deep Dive: Implementing Variable Game Speed

Spent most of the day doing game speed stuff. Absolutely everything needs to tie in to this game speed, so I’ve got a scriptable object that contains a game speed float. That float is set with a slider, and every single speed and time variable in the game gets multiplied or divided by that, respectively. E.g. bullet speed is multiplied (a speed of 10 would become a speed of 5 when the game speed is 0.5, for example), the time it takes a boss to move is divided (if it takes 0.5 seconds for the boss to move from the centre to the edge, it becomes 0.75 seconds with a game speed of 0.5).

This is great, but I’m yet to figure out a nice, consistent way of doing it. I’ve got a game speed scriptable object that I can use everywhere I need to, but that still requires me remembering to multiply everything by it! Setting Time.timeScale doesn’t work, since there are a few things that need to run independently of timescale - and it makes hitstop a LOT more complicated.

For now I’ll just carry on doing it this way, maybe I just write some validation somewhere that checks against me being stupid. Because lets face it, I really can be 🥲

If you’ve got any suggestions, I’d love to hear them - post a comment down below!

What’s next?

The UI stuff is broadly there now, I need a break from it so I’ll move on to making balance tweaks for the Hexagon in preparation for the next round of testing. There are a few things that are too difficult, and one thing is completely broken - maybe I’ll do a deep dive on collision detection for fast-rotating objects tomorrow?