Welcome back to Prog.
TLDR: New builds available here and in the files section.
This last month I’ve worked on redoing the first combat level from my first large demo. The demo features the player attacking the bandits at a simple farm. Also, for those that tried the town walkabout demo, I wasn’t notified about the demo not working properly until this last week. The level transitions don’t put the player in the proper positions, there are no collisions for interior walls, there are random collisions on terrain sections that should be walkable, and a couple other unintended bugs. I’ve worked to get it up and running. Turns out multiple things were tagged as “Player” in the scene (the players damage and detection child objects). In the editor it only found the actual player while in the build it moved the damage controller. Sorry for uploading a buggy mess. At least it’s not the final game.
Now let’s go over new features in the level.
There aren’t any new major gameplay features that weren’t in the original level except for tripwires. They are a bit obvious but I won’t tell where they are within the level to see if people notice. It’s just a simple wire between two posts and when the player walks through it, it will break and trigger explosive barrels that are linked to it. There can be a bit of a delay added and I might try that with some sound effects to warn the player they’re about to blow up in future builds.
There’s a boss enemy now! The idea is there are two phases. In the first phase the boss walks around and shoots (what will probably be a pistol)l at the player. After a certain amount of time, he shoots off rockets towards the player with bullets flying out like sparks.
After the sparks, the rockets hit around the player.
After a few volleys of rockets, the boss runs to the furthest corner from the player and launches a larger barrage. Once the boss’s health is low, he transitions into a chase mode where he shoots off rockets to chase the player. After the transition, the only other phase is the boss dying. Nothing special there. Deregister the boss from the game manager, destroy the boss gameobject, then spawn in a corpse that animates him dying.
I don’t expect the boss to be too challenging for most players, it is planned to be just the first boss. I definitely need feedback on the difficulty.
There is a cool effect I’m attempting to do with areas that are hard to see or completely obstruct the player. The dilapidated house and the metal awning become transparent to help the player see what they’re doing. I could have used a shader to cut a hole through the sprites, but that doesn’t help when bullets coming toward the player aren't visible.
This isn’t a new feature but sadly the irrigation canals that the player could fall into aren’t here anymore since most players didn’t know what was happening when they fell due to a lack of sprites and effects. I might try to implement them again in a water-themed level once I’ve established a baseline for the player’s sprites.
I think that’s all for new gameplay features. There are a few new sprites which I won’t go over in detail except for this fine beast.
I wanted a beast of burden and I wanted it to look more alien so I don’t have to worry about a Goofy Pluto situation. Story-wise, I have an idea for why it would be alien, but I don’t want to focus on that just yet.
Here are the sprite numbers.
Non unique NPCs (32/384)
Props (33/113)
So here's looking forward to getting ever so closer to finishing the game! Also if you want to support development, please consider watching this page and sharing with your friends.
Nice of you to drop by and I hope you enjoy the game!
I'll be back next month.
