Trapped in the Sky - Weekly update 10th July blog - Ched80

This week was another week of development making my way through the features for the next beta.

Here's a summary:

I spent half of this week re-working the NPC logic. I did have this big mass of code that was handling all the NPC decisions and animations and it was getting a bit messy and I wasn't really happy with how the NPCs behaved in the game anyway. So I went back to my note pad and sketched out the logic I wanted the NpCs to follow. Here's a cleaner version.



The sketch helped a lot and I was able to re-write the code fairly quickly. Was took the time was checking and debugging all the weird behaviours this logic brought to the table. And while it's not 100% complete yet, I am much happier with it.

Added a new NPC type - "Guards" while at the moment behave the same as in mates, they will be adjusted before the beta goes out so that they are always armed, are tougher to beat and can track the player better. For these reasons, there will be clearly fewer guards in each play through.

Adjusted the Robbery and Smuggler Crime images to make them look better. I'm thinking of unlocking the Robbery crime if you complete the gamewithout using any lock picks and unlocking the smuggler crime if you complete the game while carrying over 100 items.

Adjusted the normal maps for the flooring in the crew quarters to be more subtle.

Added showers and Gun racks to the crew's quarters.

Adjusted the player's text when a section fails for the second time so that it is more clear that the failed section cannot be accessed any more.

Fixed NPCs walking through the top row of walls in the cells section.

Fixed the game showing the next section before the level has began.

So while there was less progress this week, improving NPC behaviour was key to the next beta and I'm more happy with how that's working now.

Here's a quick vid of how it all looks


Trapped in the Sky - beta 3 rogress - Indie DB

I also took advantage of the Game Dev Humble Bundle this week. While I already had AGKv2 and Game Guru the amount of assets provided with the bundle was worth together with a few nice tools.

Before I go, just the usual cheeky reminder that beta two is currently available via itch.io for $0.99.