Ammo amount and how frequently you get it was a big point of contention when designing the game.

When first designing the weapon system we had to decide how much ammo the player would have at one time.  originally the player had unlimited ammo which lead to just spamming shots the entire time during playtests. This was unfun and really decreased the challenge throughout the game.

When choosing the amount of ammo the player has we had to consider what is possible with the amount of ammo. After much testing we found that 12 was the perfect amount.

 As the normal enemies take 3 shots to kill that would give the player exactly 4 kills if no shots were missed with max ammo or 3 for the blue enemies.  The player will likely miss a few shots we came to the conclusion that 12 was good for doing enough damage while also leaving room for error on the players behalf.

After doing this there came the issue of how often the enemies drop ammo upon being killed.

If every enemy dropped ammo the player would not have any worries of ever really running out which would lead us back to the problem of unlimited ammo. 

A 60% chance of dropping an ammo box (with 6 bullets) was our golden ratio in the end. The player needs ammo to kill enemies but if they can always access it they never worry about running out of bullets. Only 60% of enemies dropping ammo makes the player stay cautious to the possibility of running out.

Another problem we faced was that sometimes players really did just run out of bullets and with none at all they are unable to kill more enemies to get more bullets and would be forced to restart. 

This felt like an unfair loss so we remedied it by having some bullet drops be spawned in certain areas on the map from the start. Clever players can remember where these are and make their way back to them if they happen to run out or are just running low on ammo. 

Also as enemies still drop ammo even if you're have the maximum you can avoid picking it up until later as well.

Even small details like this were thought out heavily when designing the game. In the next devlog I'll talk about designing the health system.