Post-jam feedback and Improved movement

The Chronosaur submission to Gamedev.js 2023 got an "eh" Overall rating of 104/202 -- just about right in the middle of the pack. The game matched the theme well (rank 70/202), and had OK graphics (85/202), but the gameplay was terrible (rank 148/202). I was hoping to do better with audio (rank 108/202) since I put a lot of time into getting the music, sounds, and narration to work -- not something I usually spend time on. Also disappointed in innovation (rank 138), but I suppose a 3d web game and infinite procedural terrain are closer to table-stakes these days. 

First the positive feedback:

• "Love the use of the latest web techs! By the way, the terrain is impressive! Love the low poly graphics and the nice animations! Good job!"
• "...but I found it fun :D I like how you implemented voice-over, clever and efficient!"
• "Cool game ... Quite fun though"
• "This game looks nice... The dinosaurs are cool and a bit scary."
• "Love the feelings of being lost in a  world full of dangerous dinosaurs. ... Well done, it's a strong entry in this jam"
• "Looks pretty good!"
• "...overall it was fun to play."

I'm glad that at least one person actually liked the idea of being lost, since that was what I was going for.

One of the biggest flaws that the comments revealed was in the movement: 

• "nice but player is running very fast"
• "felt like the ground was slippery and hard to control"
• "the movement is a bit slippery, making it difficult to control"
• "Cool game but omg the movement is so frustrating"
• "Movement is a bit slippery"
• "the jump [is] too floaty"

Since the game is mostly a walking simulator, the low gameplay rating makes sense if the walking itself doesn't feel good. So I felt like that needed to be addressed. 

In v1.0.1 I made some significant changes in how friction works to help make the world feel less slippery. The ground friction now doesn't just turn on or off based on movement, but instead changed based on both the velocity and the direction of the movement. This allowed me to make the friction higher without it slowing down the characters too much. I think the parameters could still use some tweaking, but it's definitely an improvement. (If you're interested in the code, it's this: https://github.com/rocket-boots/rocket-boots/blob/v0.12.0/src/physicsUtils.js#L4)

The scanner system also got some negative feedback:

• "Maybe a little too lost, a map would be very helpful, especially because I didn't get how the scanner is supposed to work"
• "the radar implementations is a bit confusing, hard to say which direction should I go, also, the terrain doesn't help much as everywhere looks almost the same, feels like walking in circles"
• "I got a little lost"

If I keep working on this game I'll definitely try to improve the scanner system since that's essential to the fun. Having something else to do -- avoid dinosaurs, mine resources, etc. -- would also be nice to add. If you've made it this far, let me know what you think!