The last two months of updates were skipped, this is mostly because I had nothing at all to show since most of the work done was behind the curtains. But now to close the year I have some pretty exciting new things to share. Let's jump in.
1. Stunning Skeleton Warrior
Here’s the finished Skeleton Warrior, complete with his new Shield Bash attack!
This guy’s attack is unstoppable, so attacking him while he’s winding up an attack will likely end up with you getting a massive hit. That being said, attacking him while not winding up an attack will end up with him going into his defensive stance were he blocks 80% of the damage!
As if that wasn’t bad enough, after blocking a couple of attacks he will retaliate with an aoe (Area of Effect) shield bash that causes minor damage and also stuns the player for 3 seconds, leaving him open to a sword swing for massive damage.
2. Cross Dungeon Trigger Systems
So I just put a lever in game to be used as sort of cross-dungeon trigger mechanism. The lever and whatever it opens don’t have to be in the same room or even in the same floor. This allows me to make doors that encourage or force the player to do some dungeon exploration in order to proceed or find side treasures.
3. Status Screen
I added a simple status screen where you can see the current characters general stats and the current traits. I still need a tooltip system where players can see a short description of traits and each attribute but it will do for now.
It is now also possible to navigate between different in-game menus without having to close the current menu and then open the other which was a massive pain.
4. Dramatic Deaths
To break away from the boring coding for a while, I added a new 4 color shader and a slowdown effect on death for added drama. Still needs a bit of tweaking on the colors but it’s feeling pretty good now!
5. Completely Re-Done Side Weapon System
Most of the side weapons are ranged so I decided to overhaul the entire system to introduce ammo and proper aiming. The player can now aim in any direction when a ranged side weapon is equipped as opposed to only being able to throw/shoot in the direction the character was looking. This only makes sense since enemies can come at you from any direction and the previous system left the player with huge blind spots.
Also, in the previous system, side weapons were only limited by a cool down and had unlimited ammo, which was fine for weapons with a longer cool down, however with the new weapons that I am adding I needed to have shorter cool downs to allow rapid firing so having unlimited ammunition made them feel over powered. The player will now be collecting a general 'ammo' item that covers all ranged sub weapons. Each weapon will have it's own 'ammo used per use' attribute which determines the maximum ammo carried by the character.
In the GIF above you can see the first of the new weapons (Shotgun - more below) working with the new side weapon HUD. The light outline around the gun icon shows it's loaded state and the red bar on the side represents the remaining ammo. Upon loading the icon gives off a little flash that helps the player notice it's done loading without having to look away from the action. Of course since the each of the weapon's parameters are procedurally generated the HUD is built to be completely dynamic.
6. Shotgun!
So as mentioned above, the first new side weapon is a Shotgun! The Shotgun fires small pellets at medium speeds that individually don't cause much damage but all together pack a good punch so while not very useful at a distance, it is absolutely devastating up close.
Like most other things in The Wishgranter, the Shotgun has multiple attributes that are procedurally generated for added variety. So depending on it's rarity and value, the following attributes are variable:
- Pellet Count
- Pellet Speed
- Pellet Spread
- Pellet Damage
- Ammo Usage Per Shot (explained above)
- Recoil Strength
- Fire Rate
The Shotgun is just the first of the new side weapons and I hope to add much more in 2018.
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That's is all for 2017.
I am currently aiming for an initial release on steam early access sometime in 2018. That being said I can't promise anything since I do not want to rush the project and release too early. What I can promise is that the game will be finished and it will come out someday when it's ready.
Stay tuned on the project's tumblr devlog and my twitter for the latest updates.
Hope you like the project so far and thanks for reading!
Have a great 2018!
