Date: 13.5.2023

Activity:

• Continued working on Project C

Notes:
I didn’t do as much this week as I did the last, mainly because I participated in a game jam so I was working on a different game. That’s part of the reason why this devlog is a bit late.

I mostly just did what I said I would at the end of the last devlog. I made actual enemy AI, proper combat, gave the player character limited health so she can actualy die now and made checkpoints for her to respawn at. I also made ladders, ropes (which are basically just ladders with a different sprite) and little branches that the player can “tie a rope to” and send it down for later use. Could be useful later for shortcuts and such.

I also gave the player the ability to recall her spear. I guess you could say she already had that but that was just for testing purposes. Now she has to stand still for like a second to get her spear back which I think is a lot better. I also made the spear shake when she’s recalling it and then fly back towards her. I think it looks great.

Enemy-wise, I finished the slime enemies. They now have two different jump animations - one for like ‘idle’ jumps and the other for like ‘attack’ jumps. The attack jumps are a bit longer than the normal jumps so they’re a bit harder to avoid. I also made a system (for all enemies) that gives an enemy a patrol start and end x position (I’m working with the assumption that no enemies will patrol vertically). If an enemy hasn’t seen the player, they just walk between their patrol start and end. Once they spot the player, they ‘forget’ about their patrol path and just focus on hunting down the player. If the player manages to get far enough away, the enemy forgets about the player and tries to get back to their patrol path. I think it’s a decent system. I also did a fun think with the slimes. To make sure they never jump outside their patrol path, I actually precalculate where they’ll land with before taking each jump. If the jump would land them outside of their patrol path, I instead make them jump in the other direction. I also noticed that the attack jump is just high enough that the slime sometimes jumps over the player. I liked that as a way to dodge their attacks but it wasn’t consistent enough so we made the player able to crouch. Now it’s possible to very consistently dodge a slime’s attack just by crouching at the right spot and since all attack jumps are the same, you can sometimes just crouch forever and watch the slime jump over you back and forth. I like that.

Then we also made a skeleton enemy. He usually just walks back and forth through his patrol path but if he gets too close to the player, he starts slashing his sword in front of him. I really like the animations Bety drew - all of them. The skeleton attack animation is currently the longest animation in the game. It was quite hard getting it to work well in-game but I think it’s great now, tho I’ll probably make him move forward further during the attack animation - it’s too easy to dodge now.

I also gave everything a bit of invincibility time after taking a hit - especially the player but also the enemies. During the invincibility period, I made them fade in and out quickly to make it visible. It also adds more feedback to each hit - both hits dealt and hits taken - which I like.

I also made bridges that work as fall-through platforms.

I forgot to mention that this week, I actually drew something as well. I reused some of my older sprites for the ladders, the ropes and the rope branches. I drew the checkpoint animation (with heavy inspiration from Bety’s spear animations) and I also drew the bridge. I kinda felt bad for making her draw so much stuff…

I’m very happy with where the game’s at now. I feel like it’s missing sounds tho - might be the next thing I’ll work on. Thass about it.

Invested hours:
I dunno, I wasn’t counting again but I’m guessing something around 20…?