DevBlog 04 – Quick Update

So the Turkey boss absolutely wrecked me, but I’ve still gotten quite a bit done over the last month spite having to take many breaks to not burn out over the Turkey not doing as it’s told (stupid Turkey) and a few other things (Starting to hit project bloat on my end, will likely need to consolidate soon). Also we’ve released Episode 2 of Meat the Carvers so I’ve been busy finalizing music as well as composing music for the next episode. There’s still be quite a bit accomplished though. This will be a more brief log as time isn’t on my side at the moment but just wanted to chime in. Unfortunately that means I won’t be taking the time to add a gameplay loop / demo video or new screenshots but I’ll make up for it in a few weeks when I updated again.

Progress

Since the last time I’ve broken things down, lets go over what’s changed.

  • 0.3 Iteration – We’ve upgraded from JA 0.2 to 0.3. What that means is I’ve completely rewritten and / or refactored a lot of the old code / art / animations to be more fluid. I’ve rewritten Jack’s controller into a state machine to make him much easier to build upon in the future as well. I’ll likely take a similar approach to enemies in future iterations as they should all have more in common than they have different, so it should make the development cycle a bit more fluid.
  • Turkey Fight – Spite all of the challenges the Turkey miniboss has presented, I can say the boss is completed in a scripting sense. He’s still incredibly buggy, there’s a ton of animation work still to be done but until the next iteration I’m likely to push that to the side so I can continue to be productive. I will, however, make sure he’s in good shape before I make any kind of external demo’s though. Only the MTC team deserves to see him in the current state (you’re welcome). He’s still killable though, that’s all that matters for the moment.
  • Objective Scripting – As mentioned in the last blog post, everything is currently written the way it needs to be for me to put in the objective system, I still need to get the UI looking the way I want it, however. By the next log this should be completed.
  • Items – Items / inventory is at a fairly completed state. Right now everything works at a level technically that it’s ready to ship as they say. We do, however, need to put some UI assets and some animations to them.

Things to Come

  • Objective Scripting – As mentioned in the last blog post, everything is currently written the way it needs to be for me to put in the objective system, I still need to get the UI looking the way I want it, however. By the next log this should be completed.
  • Items – As mentioned, still need to have some assets made for the item icons as well as animations for Jack using the items.
  • Upstairs / Basement – There are still quite a few rooms in the house we don’t have finished yet, but hopefully by the next update I’ll at least have some stuff to get us upstairs. The level / demo will end in the basement of the house so we’ll save that for last (it’s also the smallest area with only a few rooms). For the upstairs, however, we have Damien’s room but I believe we still need assets for a few hallway shots as well as a map for the minimap in the UI. We haven’t scripted what all adversity is going to be met upstairs, I believe it is decided this will be where we get the dart gun though. That mentioned….
  • Dart Gun – This shouldn’t be too difficult to implement, but it’s certainly gotta get done. The assets for the gun are already in the game, they just aren’t being used. I’ll have to find something for the darts though… Anyway, the dart gun will obviously be a ranged weapon, I’ll need to implement an ammo system which shouldn’t be overly complicated I’ll also need to implement a stunned state for enemies when they are hit. I’m not looking for the dart gun to necessarily damage enemies, more of a way for Jack to safely be able to get in hits from certain enemies. That being said, it’s likely I’ll be putting enemies in certain parts of the house blocking them off that attack at a speed so fast that you’ll die trying to bypass them without the dart gun. Metroidvania at it’s finest, amirite?

I’ll put up some video / images in the next post and make it show off things a bit more. I just realized I hadn’t posted in a month spite writing a whole new build, temporarily wrapping things up on probably the most complicated thing I’ve ever programmed (I believe the Turkey boss will end up with close to 1k lines of code + dozens of animations by the time I’m ready to publicly show him off). I honestly didn’t think the fight was that ambitious, but the more I got into it the more I realized the priest end boss seems technically less challenging. Oh well, it’s fun to do either way! Until next time.

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