Graphics and Enemies - Devlog 4

SPEAR » Devlog

2 years ago by Helidara

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We’re back, with enemies working now! Not only that, but our player model is no longer just a diamond, he’s even animated (sorta), marking the final placeholder being removed! Getting him to have a swinging animation might be good for gameplay clarity, but we’ll talk more on that in a little.

Puzzles

We had a little issue with puzzles after implementing a way to have them move up and down too, which might’ve been solved in a better way, but it did lead to some interesting visuals

This has been rectified, and the solution to which is easy to set up and account for.

Player

We have a cool little dude! Spritesheet sourced from open game art by Disthron (https://opengameart.org/content/mr-necromancer-man-animated) To differentiate from idle to moving, the walking cycle has less frames of animation and is sped up slightly. Adding an airborne animation might not be too difficult, as I could tie the start of the animation to the activation of the swing mechanic, but we’ll see how it goes.

Enemies

There are still a few issues with enemies

But overall they’re working close to how I’d like them! They won’t activate if they’re either off screen, or if their path to the player is blocked by a wall or the floor. Their speed could use some tweaking and obviously finding a way to move them back to their spawn point when the player dies is the next priority.

The AI is pretty simple, it simply just moves towards the player, and adjusts the angle at which it moves. The line of sight gets interrupted by some invisible things (like the checkpoint above) but that's easily resolved.

Second Level

The second area is now under construction and is coming along rather well! The plan is to have the are become lighter and lighter in colour as the player moves up them.

Feedback

I think it would be nice if you could jump not only when grounded, but also once the player has been pulled to/is swinging from the spear, since at the moment when you release to throw another spear you often fall quite a long way before the next spear attaches to something.

This is something I’ve thought for a while about how to implement. I think the ideal way to implement this is adding an additional check to the movement script. Currently the only way to jump is for the player to be grounded and for the surface they’re standing on to be marked as a floor. Adding the swinging being another condition for that check could allow for this mechanic, and hopefully it’ll be in the next build!