Tweaks & Tests

Hey everyone! In the last post, I said that there might be a video dev-log starting soon. There will not be one this week but I expect to get one done before the end of this month. 

Level Designer
I have made some minor tweaks to the level designer project. I found out that I had not finished one of the functions of the render process, so I added that in. I also made some minor tweaks to the prefab assembly step of the level design process so that it is more automated. The designer is now at a point where we can really start making levels, as I have started to over the past week.

Test Level
This is something I should have done from the very beginning but haven't until now. I have created a test room level to make it easier for me to test mechanics and enemies. It is very simple but worth mentioning because you will see it in one of the GIFs in this post.

The Kobold aka. 'Root-Toot-Point-&-Shoot'
I needed a break from system improvements and tutorials this week. So, I started creating the next enemy, which was the only other normal enemy besides the Flop Shark in the prototype demo. This enemy is called the Kobold. Originally, it was called Root-Toot-Point-&-Shoot, but this name is too long for us to work with so we renamed it. The above GIF is of the old version in the prototype.

So here it is now, in an early development form. The Kobold currently has one ability, the grenade throw which you can see in the GIF. This grenade does not deal damage but launches any creature away from it. The idea is that they will use the grenades to get up to higher areas. This will be one of the hardest things to get working properly with the pathfinding but I've got some ideas in the works for that. The other hardest challenge to solve with this enemy is something I have struggled with since the demo, leg movement.

The legs will work in the same way as the arms of the Flop Shark, but they pose a much greater challenge because they shouldn't logically go above the hips of the creature. I have some idea of how to do this but it is going to take some time to perfect. It gets even more complex when I realise that the Kobolds will need to climb in some situations. I am tempted to give them an arm to use in this situation to make their climbing look more plausible. Obviously, they wouldn't be able to use both arms here because one of them is a gun. I have not got the gun attack setup yet but I am looking forward to the fun chaos that might create!

New Levels
I have started designing a few new levels to be used in the Flop Shark region of the game. They are still early designs and may change but I thought it would be good to show at least one of them!

Other tweaks include changing the tutorial screen that used to appear when infesting a creature to a name screen. This might change again but I think it is interesting to have something appear the first time you infest a new creature. We've also started creating a menu to show the Mutagens you collect and a proper HUD to replace the boring text placeholders I'm currently using, very exciting!

That's it for this post! I hope you like how the game is going. Thanks for reading!