It became clear to me very quickly that my camera in the isometric view looked a little cheap. Looking at how XCOM implements their camera, I noticed that they did actually use a perspective view, but at an isometric height. Today I switched to a perspective view, which I think really improves things.
I also added a 'killcam', which is a camera directly behind my player. When I shoot at enemies, it now switches to the camera so that you can watch the kill shot and then back again. Pretty simple stuff really, but very effective.
As I worked through the shooting mechanics and really got ray casting to work properly, I suddenly found that I couldn't shoot my enemies. I was initially perplexed, but then quickly realized that everything was working perfectly: the shot was hitting the cover (wall) in front of the target.
It was time to implement destructible terrain.
Part 1: I aim an the enemy on the far right. He happens to be under cover, so my shot hits the wall in front of him.
Part 2: The wall currently only has a HP of 1, and my laser does 1 HP of damage, so the wall is destroyed. With the wall gone, the enemy is exposed and can be hit easily. In the current prototype, characters have 3 HP, so just 3 more hits from the laser and he will be dead!
Now that I had a basic level with shooting from point A to point B, I needed to add some randomization. I personally don't like games of attrition, I prefer games of skill, with some luck.
Enter the random number generator. Basically I pass in 2 numbers, a chance to hit percentage, and a random percentage The two numbers are compared, if it's a hit, no problem, if it's a miss, I created some random variation so that the shot misses and goes off into the distance.
I spent a bit of time trying to create a random shot until I discovered the Random.insideUnitCircle function. Basically I can multiply a variable against it to have it select a random position around my target, which I then just add to my target position.
Finally, to get everything working, I decided to create a test level. I setup a target, with a wall behind it. It works pretty well and is another item I can cross off the list.
