Made sure to finish off the time power, both light and dark inputs. Added a different animation for the enhanced ability as I always do. Made sure it has special effects to make it clear it was casting and it was finished. Pulled a nice electric sound from the free sound files I had.
I wanted the shadow to do more then show the next attack. I want to appear as wild moving possibilities. So I added a function that plays a looping montage which is just a series of animations played back to back. I ran into issues with this because it was interrupting the main attack of the shadow, and because I had it tied to the real attack, the actual attack wasn’t firing off. So I needed to find a way to play the montage where it would not get in the way. I found that if I played it only when the power was activated and also when the shadow would be invisible then it would not interrupt the attacks. At least so far it’s working fine.
I realized a good counterpart to seeing the “future” of the enemy, would simply be to speed up the character’s actions. I attached a lightning aura to the player for nice effect and simply sped up the play rate of the animations. It doesn’t speed up any of the character’s movement, but anything that plays a montage is played faster. So, the character can attack and dodge faster. In order to not get any errors in logic from the player casting the speed aura again, I make sure they cannot gain Primelight while sped up. It is also a good way to balance the ability since they can attack very fast. They can still cast it at least twice with enough resource, but I just have it add to a timer.
The blue lighting along with the blue lantern gives off a very nice effect. I found another longer electricity effect that I added to the enhanced logic.
I didn’t like where I left the hammer. I made it similar to the Blue mode wherein both abilities drain Primelight. So the hammer will always slam, but it makes a smaller circle unless it is enhanced. I made sure the hammer event worked well for both normal and strong attacks. Previously the normal hammer just swung, which didn’t seem like an interesting attack to use. Now the player will have the option to shoot or slam.
I’ve gotten pretty comfortable adding new powers, but I don’t think I will be adding any more than these because it can already be pretty hectic. It’s nice to not have too many options. I am intrigued how other players will end up using the Time shadow power.
I made sure the Golem also has a Time Shadow. It’s important that all enemies have one in their logic. But his shadow won’t work like the others because the power comes from him after all.
Went back to the buttons so I could add smarter buttons that checked if the player was sure they wanted to something. This is important so they don’t accidentally quit the game or return to the main menu unless they want to. It was tricky at first but simple once I understand what I was doing. I am using my custom buttons to make sure that when I update it one day all the buttons will reflect the new look. The buttons works by hiding the yes or no buttons, making sure they don’t take up space. Then they pop out when the player clicks the button. Yes is connected to the actual function of the button, and no simply hides it again.
A tiny but important detail was that for the menus I made sure that the button being focused was remembered by the menu so when you return to the options menu from another menu it will be at the last button you pressed.
Lastly before I closed the engine I added leaf particles to the main menu, just for extra cool aesthetics.
I will start conceptualizing and planning the next stage. While doing that I also have an idea of a difficulty setting that is for players who aren’t into combat but still wanna play for the puzzles and stories. I will have to figure out how to implement that.
GoldenGratus Games 