The mudfish, when it moves into a pit space, should stop for 1 tick, the pit animation should play, but the mudfish should come back up. In other words, the mudfish removes pits from play.

Additionally, the mudfish should die instantly when it runs into a rock (and this should likely be reflected in its flavor text).

It only happens sometimes, I previewed the sounds to make sure they exported correctly, but when I ran the ExampleScene it sounded like about 1/3 of the time the sound gets cut off after the projectile hits. Not a super urgent issue because especially after the music gets added it won't be too noticeable.

The player can discover new fish under the rocks in the procreate level, but sometimes they swim offscreen, lost. That leaves the player feeling cheated.

Modify it so the new fish always swim towards the centre of the viewport.

If a fish with a path that moves diagonally is selected, they will move out of bounds if placed in certain locations (the top for the seahorse, and the bottom for the crab respectively), or if a tower/rock changes their pathing such that they move there. This could be a legitimate strategy for some levels, however in its current state it looks more like a bug than anything else. An easy solution to this is to give the background a subtle tile texture, or making it so the area outside of the play area are effectively "rocks".

Pelican should:

1. damage a fish that is inside it, every tick
2. be damaged by the fish that is inside it, every tick
3. target fish that enter the area around it, not just directly in front of it
4. only try to eat a fish if it is not currently trying to eat a fish

Bob pointed out that many of the fish don't have movement animations.
Make a simple tween stretch/squish animation for them to take on every step.

Add a bucket or tide-pool prop/obstacle which might hold new fish the player can discover.
Maybe make the reward schedule intermittent, so players don't know if they'll get a fish or not. This might foster exploring different lanes. re #19

Sharks don't die when impeded by rocks, but they can't affect the rocks either. This causes the game to effectively hang with the player unable to finish a level.

Namely the octopus, seahorse, and sad fish.

Gray fish: 50 hp, 5 damage, 2 ticks to dry
Boot fish: 75 hp, 10 damage, 3 ticks to dry
Gold fish: 50 hp, 5 damage, 2 ticks to dry
Crab: 100 hp, 15 damage, 4 ticks to dry
Mudfish: 80 hp, 15 damage, does not dry, dies on contact with rocks
Seahorse: 50 hp, 25 damage, 3 ticks to dry
Sea urchin: 110 hp, 10 damage, 5 ticks to dry
Pufferfish: 150 hp, 10 damage, 6 ticks to dry
Octopus: 70 hp, 0 damage, 4 ticks to dry
Squid: 60 hp, 20 damage, 3 ticks to dry
Sea slug: 1 hp, 999 damage, 1 tick to dry
Shark: infinite hp, 40 damage, does not dry

Tack shooter: 75 hp, 15 damage
Sand cannon: 45 hp, 25 damage
Seagull: 40 hp, 40 damage
Hook: 15 damage per tick
Pelican: 80 hp, 15 damage per tick inside its mouth, releases after 4 ticks or dead (takes damage each tick from fish inside it)
AoE hand slap (?): 50 damage, does not die (?)

Bob requested wiggly text for tutorial popups.
https://godotshaders.com/shader/noise-offset-wiggle/

With static defences, there's a clear dominant strategy: send all units down one cleared lane.
All players will do this because they like to win, but they'll feel unsatisfied because it seems cheap.

Find rewards for using multiple lanes or disincentivize the single conga line strategy.

The finish line fails to count the first unit to cross the line.

If moisture is a mechanic, players might need a way to restore wetness.
Puddles could be a beneficial type of objstacle/tower.

Apply the new (expanded) sprites to the fish hook and sand ball, so there's some empty space in the texture around the actual unit. That will fix the auto-generated shadow.

(And check any other towers or objects for busted shadows (blur cutoff) while we're at it.

In some situations, like when seahorses and crabs hit obstructions, they take moisture damage. If that happens to kill a unit, it's not obvious to the player what caused that death. Happens most often when sending units along the top or bottom border. The player wouldn't realize that strategy is extra dangerous.

1. it continues shooting after its target has died
2. the hitbox it shoots remains active until a fish passes through them, which is why "1" is even a problem; the tack shooter can stack as many hitboxes around itself as it continues shooting, often instakilling the next fish that gets close.

A player can get a mudfish to the end, but it isn't counted.. perhaps it's disabling its collision shapes or monitoring.

We need to make the finish zone bigger, so the mudfish can't escape it, or come up with some alternate method of detecting finishing fishes.

The shark fin looks a bit weird with a shadow all around it, like it's not making contact with the ground.

Consider removing the drop shadow for that piece, or creating a new art asset.

The description window often stays visible and gets in the way of larger levels.

Something happened during changing the spawn queue over to a deployment area: the level doesn't end anymore. Check the signal on the finish zone and the listeners.

Spawned units were moved into current_level/UnitContainer instead of Lanes. That's likely the source of the problem.

Sometimes levels won't end. Maybe a shark is pressed up against a rock, or whatever.
Other times, the player isn't happy with a strategy they've deployed, so they'd like to retry the level.

Add a restart level button to the pause menu.

Add a lose condition for the arcade levels, with some sort of counter to reward progress.

Each level should have its own goals (e.g. get one crab and three fish to exit)

• spawning any fish
• pelican swallowing and releasing fish
• sand cannon spitting projectiles
• tack thrower throwing flags
• fish caught on fishing hook
• fishing line reeling in
• new glass bottle breaking
• pit trap catching a fish and closing
• seagull flying / perching
• grass rustling when a fish passes through
• fish entering the finish line
• Win
• Lose

For procreate minigame:

• fish pair matched and travelling offscreen to procreate
• new fish discovered when player clicks on rocks
• fish hooked on fishing line (repurposed from main game scene)
• ambient bubbles

When the player starts a procedural level, they can spawn fish without selecting a button, which is appropriate. However, no button appears to be highlighted, so it's hard for the player to tell what they're spawning.

Make sure a button gets a focus highlight during procedural levels.

There's not much payoff for unlocking fish, and not much motivation to unlock new fish.
Provide text in the procreate screen to inform the players that new types of fish can be unlocked.

eg: "Fish discovered: 3/9"

I was playing through the arcade mode and got a puffer fish hung up on the grass, unable to move.

Urchin is supposed to be able to hit the tiles around it, not just in front of it.

The playing field needs to be more dynamic.
Make all towers adjust their locations once every 10 ticks or so.

The playing field needs to be more dynamic.
Every 5 ticks, there should be a chance of a new fishing hook arriving.

after the refactor so towers shoot on ticks, it seems like they're never deactivating, because they just keep shooting even after all the player units are gone.

The hand slap has all kinds of jank and no official art assets.
Either fix it or remove it.

The game, in BaseLevel.gd select_first_available_button(), auto-selects the next available unit in two situations:

• at the very start
• whenever a player empties their supply of any particular type of fish.

The problem I'm having is that the button Focus Line2D doesn't update when the game auto-selects a new unit.

Seagull was created as a realtime path follower.
We decided to use turn-based movement instead of realtime.

Modify seagull to take discrete steps.
Come up with a method which allows level editors to easily add seagull paths to the tile map.

Lots of these weird edge case conditional requirements are popping up.
If a pelican releases a fish onto a square with a bottle, the bottle doesn't break.

When a sand cannon is placed at the edge of the deployment zone, users can't place fish beside it. But it wouldn't be clear to them why that's the case. So it seems like a bug.

Need more Units

• Seahorse
• Mudfish
• Shark
• Pufferfish
• Octopus
• Sea slug
• Gold fish

Right now, players can't possibly know why they should choose a sea slug or a mudfish.

Consider improving descriptions dramatically, or adding a unit-info popup card which exposes all their abilities.

Bob the Seagull King: my idea was a text display and then just a bunch of sprites (of whatever team won) fall across the screen

Having turn-based attacks instead of simultaneous attacks would allow us to have non-overlapping audio effects.

I'm not sure how much effort would be involved in building such a queuing system though, or whether it'd be worth that effort.

I played the procedural levels and got stuck on the third or fourth level. I had no units left to send, and lots across the finish line, but the game didn't end.

Find the source of the bug and/or add a "nothing happening" timer as a workaround hack.

Levels should always end.

Made a new background texture for a panel which provides instructions to the player.

Maybe move the panel to various hotpoints around the screen, as a micro-tutorial, then hide it behind a button?

Some fish should be immune to some threats.

Let the (submerged) mudfish and urchin ignore the fish_hook.

• Pelican: Large bird that sits in one place. Any fish that gets within 1 (2?) tile of it is immediately taken into its beak (but only one at a time), and each tick, the Pelican will deal some damage to the fish. If the fish deals enough damage, the Pelican will spit the fish out on the other side, but if the fish dies first, the Pelican consumes it.

• Squid: Blasts ink at nearby fish, slowing them down.

• Fish Hook: If a fish walks through a tile with a fish hook on it, they will take damage per tick until they die or make it out.

• Seagrass: Any fish that walks through a tile with seagrass on it will be slowed while inside it (take an extra tick to move out of it).

Add ability to pick which collumn the units spawn in

Make the critters dry out every tick they don't move

The relocate at intervals component frequently sends units outside the playspace area.
Modify it so it's confined with playspace area constraints.

units have a drop shadow component which auto-generates a shadow based on their sprite. Unfortunately, if the unit's sprite pixels go right up to the border, the shadow doesn't look right, because it's cut off at the edges. Reimport all the unit sprites at 256x256, with some empty space around the perimeter.