Went a little crazy today and added a lot of new additions to the game. I first continued on the shield, making sure that there was a proper shield and that it could actually block damage, so now both the player and the boss can block attacks. I still have to give the boss the logic to block, but even as it is, the boss is quite difficult already. Using the animation tricks I’ve learned I used logic to make sure the shield arm reacted whenever damage was being blocked. There will definitely be tweaks later to how much Lantern Light it costs to block attacks, but balancing is the least of my worries for now. I created a few more sounds using the ones I already had, merely mixing and adjusting them to sound different for the specific effect. Particle effects, sounds, and hit animations really sell the combat. Some of the code is getting a bit “noodly” due to the layers I’m adding.
Other than the shield I refined the death sequence for the player a bit more. The body disappears with an effect and only the lantern remains. I think it’s a cool scene. Later I will have to figure out how to handle saving and loading from checkpoints or something similar.
I made sure the boss had its own hit animation as well. Using additive animation which is apparently like adding a layer of animation on top of the current animation. The additive will not replace or override the current animation, only serve to do whatever you want on top of it. This way the boss will show that he is being hit. It did feel strange that the boss was getting hit with no reaction. I already had the boss doing a hit reaction, but that was his whole body and I only let it happen every so often. Now that I know a bit of how to use additives I’m worried I should have been using it for some of my previous states. Oh well.
The lighting of the level is at an acceptable level. Not to bright, not to dark. I will continue to play around with it. I will move on to simpler or more stylized textures in the future so the appearance of the game could change altogether. I also wasn’t happen with the previous effect of the boss’ projectile attack, his fire wave. I found a nicer particle effect from Crunch’s files and changed the scale to fit my needs. It looks much better and even more menacing. There are so many Paragon characters I wonder what other effects I am missing out on. Maybe one of these days I’ll download them all and go through it. But that is quite the task.
My goal for the end of the week is to have a new video showcasing most if not all of the new features and gameplay. I shall see what people think.
GoldenGratus Games 