Hello everyone! This week I've got a couple of announcements to discuss and some last minute EGX preparations to show!

If you didn't already know, Squillamorph will be at EGX this week! If you're going, drop by the stand and play the latest demo! I'll be there all 4 days, so come and say hi! The latest demo features the Flopsharks, the Flopalodon, the Kobolds, and an early version of the Kragon! Both the Kobolds and Kragon have not featured at any previous events, so this is the first opportunity to try them out!

I've made an official Squillamorph Discord server! It's a place for all discussion about the game with other fans and me! You can also ask me questions about the development of the game there. I won't be active on it at all times, but I'll do my best to respond to everyone! You can join it here: Discord Server

As EGX takes place this week, I've been busy making last minute improvements. The main visual change I've made is to the Kragon boss room, which now features a big reactor-like machine in the background. I've also added some minor visual aspects to the Kragon boss, such as gun charge-up particles. Talking of bosses, I've made some changes to the music for the Flopalodon and created music for the Kragon. The new music feels much more distinct and makes the boss fights slightly more intense! Most other changes are optimisations and bug fixes. However, I have added a place for players to leave their email when they put in their name for the leaderboard entry (This is optional and only for me to let them know when the game is out). I used a notebook to take people's emails at previous events. Lastly, I've updated the main menu to include a few extra assets to add some more visual interest to it.

That's it for this week's post! If you're going to EGX, don't forget to drop by the stand and say hi! One last thing I'll mention is that it shouldn't be too long before I have a date for an Early Access launch. So keep an eye on the Squillamorph social medias!

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Hello everyone! Over the past week I've mainly been making improvements to the systems of the game. I have made a bit of progress on the visuals but not as much as I had initially planned. Anyway, lots of exciting things to cover in this post!

I was testing the game early last week when I realised that I had done nothing to highlight the wave based spawning. The only thing that did highlight the current wave was a number on the HUD. So I made an announcement machine asset and an ominous sound effect to indicate the start of a new wave. The symbol on the machine matches that on the HUD so players can associate it with the wave system. I spent some time on the
animation and sound for it, which I am very happy with. While there is only one of these announcement machines in a level the sound can be heard from anywhere within it. I've also made a small animation to highlight the wave number increasing on the HUD. The new changes do a decent job of making the waves noticeable without being too intrusive on the gameplay.

I focused quite heavily on leaderboard improvements this week. Currently, its only a local leaderboard but it needed some improving. I've changed the sorting method to sort entries by how far through the game the player got, in percentages. Then it sorts entries by the player's score. This direction I've taken the leaderboard in gears it towards completion rather than highscores. I've done this mainly for future events I take the game to, which will hopefully encourage players to play more of the game. My goal for the game's leaderboards would be to have an overall leaderboard, which players would be added to on completion of the game. I would also like to have a leaderboard for each individual region, but these are long term goals and would only work as online leaderboards.

I've only managed to do a few updates to this region. I did fix the climbing issues I mentioned about the Kobold last week. I reverted the change I made that applied gravity when both its feet weren't on the ground because this was not a good solution for gameplay. Instead I altered its pathfinding method slightly so that it can't move up as much on open tiles, which solved the leg problems I had last time. I've also put a few more scenery assets into the region. One of them is a new smaller coolant sphere machine, based on the large one I showed in the last post. When making the normal map for this one, I also improved the normal map for the larger version, making it more spherical. Hopefully, I'll be able to improve the background scenery further over the next week.

That's it for this post. I hope you like the progress updates! I expect to be working on general improvements and cosmetics over the next week, which you shall be able to see in the next post!

​​​​Thanks for reading! 
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Hello everyone! This week's post is the 50th update and I can't believe how far the game has come since the first! Over the past week, I've worked hard on the Reactor K region to get it closer to the level of the Waste Processors region. This includes new visuals, Kobold improvements and boss updates!

After a week of not working on the Kragon, I decided to come back to it. I now have a solid plan of how the fight will work and I'm excited to see what players think of it. So I don't spoil too much, I won't talk about specifics of the fight but you will see a bit of it in the GIF. I've now finished off the main visuals for the Kragon. I've updated the head and given it a neck, the foot and arm positions are now much better, and both guns are now firing in its attack. There's also a new environment asset that will play a role in the fight. I've got big plans for the scenery in this level, which I will hopefully be able to get done by next week's post. The fight still has a way to go yet, but I am really happy with the progress so far!

As I was working on the Kragon, I remembered that I meant to revisit the Kobold. The biggest challenge of improving the Kobold is the legs, as always. The way the feet decide where to go needed improving, but the main cause of their problems is the way the Kobold moves. Gravity does not affect creatures unless they move onto an air tile that is not next to a wall or floor. This means the Kobold can go up for a short distance when on the floor. This wouldn't be a problem, but the legs are stretched just too far when this happens and they have to re-position. To stop this, I added a condition that applies gravity if no feet are on the ground. This makes things mostly much better but climbing walls is more difficult, as you can see at the end of the GIF. I will continue to work on this so that playing as a Kobold can be as much fun as playing as a Flop Shark!

As I was updating the Kobold, I thought it was about time for some new background assets. I've only got one completed so far but another few in the works. This region revolves around a reactor, hence the name Reactor K, so I'm making some spherical coolant tanks or something along those lines. Hopefully, these assets will spruce up the levels like the trash assets did for the Waste Processors region. A challenge with these assets is the fact that they are spheres. I wasn't sure how to normal map them at first. I have a rule to only use 8 directions of lighting for the normals to keep the normal mapping stylised. However, with a sphere of this size it looked bad. So this is the first time that I've used a smooth normal map on an asset, which I hope doesn't break the visual style too much!

That's it for this week's post! This week I plan to do more visual work on the Reactor K region and more improvements to the enemies and Kragon boss. I hope you enjoyed seeing the past week's progress!
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​​​Thanks for reading! 
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