I made a new model for the Clockwork Zombies. They look like this now, which I hope is a little closer to "sack of flesh put into a shell for reanimating":
It only looks like this in game right now though. The import didn't go so great for some reason.
Endless mode. The Phylactery Defense level got updated with a setting that lets it spawn enemies until you die. Things get progressively harder, until like the 5th wave.
The ship has breakable braces for the balloons now. The balloons break away. The idea is to 'sink' the airship. No actual 'win' yet, though.
What's next?
Finish the airship level! The ship needs to teeter/tilt awkwardly when it loses a balloon, and finally dump its passengers and sink when it's out of balloons. Then I need to figure out where to spawn the 'victory circle' when there's just the open air.
I also realized this mode lends itself well to flying enemies. Where it used to be a pain to handle both terrain pathfinding, vertical movement, and such, this eliminates a lot of the complexity. Expect enemies that try to keep you from reaching the ship, and maybe a larger distance to close to get to it.
More texture/model updates. Especially for the levels. They're largely featureless, flat textures and that bothers me. I have more tools and time to dedicate to making it look good.
Endless mode probably needs tweaks to the dificulty curve, namely making more of it. This whole game probably needs balancing to make it more challenging, really.
I want the maneuvering of the dragon to be more meaningful, too. I think I might give an impact while landing. Maybe add some small trees that just get knocked over if you run into them.
Man the Cannons! (New Patch)
What's New?
There are now enemies that work on the level. They man the cannons, so killing them or keeping them away from the cannons means the cannons won't shoot you! They'll also abandon their posts to try to attack you if you land on the ship.
Found a number of bugs while getting the AI and pathfinding to work with the moving landscape of the ship. Like when moving around, getting stunned, recovering from being stunned. Those are fixed now. These bugs honestly took most of the time I spent last week, but they're done with now so development should pick up pace again!
The Iron-Iron spell is now a lance, since "Clone Magick" made the old spell irrelevant (where swinging the sword would clone a spell). It can be used one or two-handed, and is much longer than the swords.
What's Next?
Making the lance more unique. I want the lance to skewer enemies. It'll be fun. Maybe let it do something with the skewering?
Rounding out the airship and making it a full gameplay loop. Boss Captain. I've modelled a tricorn hat for him. He'll guard the shield generator for the balloons, and those balloons will be the thing you need to kill to take down the ship. The zombies need an animation for when they man the cannon. That cannon also needs a proper model and textures.
I think I'll make an 'endless' mode for base defense. Kids like Wave Fighters, right? Should be easy enough to make.
Airships! (New Patch)
99 (minus 94) Red Balloons (New Patch)
What's New?
Persistent settings! Now if you change your grip style or mute the music, the game should remember what you've set things to.
Retuned the walk animation for the Clockwork Zombies to be a bit more clockwork-y. Game them some ticking sound effects, too.
Phylactery Defense enemy spawnersr are no longer nondescript cubes. They're hot-air-balloons that spawn stuff below them. Some of them move towards the base slowly, which should create more pressure over time. The ones that move, however, do so over the breakable bridge, which gives the player more incentive to do so.
Tried to make the fog look a bit nicer, too.
[H1]What's next?
I've got enough visual stuff in that I think the trailer is doable. Gonna start recording footage now!
I want to make an Airship next. You're gonna take down a dirigible. Less of the NPCs, more aerial acrobatics and dealing with gun turrets mounted on a zeppelin.
The aural experience in this game is still lacking. More things need effects, and those that have effects need more variety.
Gimme some skin (New Patch)
What's new?
Dragon's got some textures! Now he isn't as much of a formless brown blob. You can see how far George has come at [this link].
The Phylactery Defense level now has boundaries, so you can't fly off the side of the map and go underneath it anymore. There's some fog to signal where the map ends, now.
Golem makes stompy sounds.
What's next?
More sound effects work. Golem hits the base (or you) with silence for the moment.
More texture/model work. The clockwork zombies are obviously clockwork, but not much zombie.
After at least the texture work, it's time to start working on a new trailer!
After new trailer, maybe start on a new level. Taking down an airship sounds like fun. Could have weakpoints like pulling on rope anchors with the dragon's teeth.
Get a Grip (New Patch)
What's new?
Phylactery Defense Level Updates! There's now a destructible bridge in the phylactery defense. It'll block the way for the golem if he hasn't passed that point, yet, forcing him to turn around and go the long way to your base. It'll also force the units from certain spawn points to take the long way around as well.
Here's what it looks like when it's not collapsed:
The level's bigger, too, partly to give a better idea of this being a dried-up river valley, and to give the enemy units the alternate paths they needed.
The Golem got a cooler death.
I don't feel so good.
This should be less disorienting if you happen to be on the golem as it dies.
I also added more menu options.
These new options let you choose how the grip buttons work. "Toggle" means you click the buttons once to take hold of a sword or harness, and once to let go. "Hold" means you must keep the controller squeezed in order to hold on.
I did pretty well, getting a few things on last week's list done, I think!
What's next?
Speaking of last week's list: Still need to do more graphics/audio touchups. Then new trailer stuff!
Well, the bridge doesn't really do anything if you're under it when it collapses, so maybe I'll have it kill the player (rather than jostle the player around and risk motion sickness.) For the time being though I'd recommend not being under the bridge when it's destroyed, just for disorientation reasons.
None of the settings so far persist between games, so you end up having to set them each time you start the game up. I might look into actually having some save file or something now.
Kill a Golem, not your ears! (New Patch!)
What's new
I've merged the "Base Defense" and "Golem Assault" levels. Now it is "Phylactery Defense". There are three spawners still, but instead of a hot-air balloon that kinda brings them back to life without really indicating that it'll do do, you have a golem. It walks slowly to your base and attacks it (pictured above).
He now has a weak point on his chest, with a ring around it as a healthbar. He can die now. (Pictured below).
Once you kill him and all the enemy spawnpoints, you win! The teleport circle will open up to welcome you home. Fly around at your leisure until you're ready.
Oh, there's also this.
I've rearranged the circles, and added two more. They let you toggle the music, both in the level select room and in your missions. This gets reset back to 'unmuted' when you open up the game since I don't have any save files (yet).
What's next?
I'm going to make the Phylactery Defense level more complete, more interesting. Maybe do those obstacles I was talking about.
I think I'll also make 'toggle grab' versus 'hold grab' its own pair of settings magic circles.This will change the way you hold onto the harness, or onto swords or spells.
I'll have to give the golem a cooler death. At the moment, I let the golem fall through the player because letting the player stay attached to the golem as it falls is really nauseating. Having the golem clip through the player breaks immersion a bit though. I think I'll have the body break apart, crumble, and fade into the ether. Maybe shove the dragon slightly like with 'activated' body parts.
Dragon needs textures now that everything else has gotten them. Gotta figure that out. Same with swords and the clockwork zombies. Graphical touchups all around.
Needs more sound stuff, too.
Soon I'l be making a more-better-harder trailer for this game, since a good number of features have been added, and aesthetic progress has been made!
Golem? Who's Lem? (New Patch)
[H1]What's new?
The golem has pathfinding and a level to walk around in.
He also has animation and coding for punching stuff. Look at him attacking this gear.
Body parts that are going to be moving fast (usually to attack) are going to be enveloped in a field and repel George if he's crawling on it. This'll hopefully keep people from getting nauseus from riding.
It doesn't actually damage yet, but when its red it'll hurt stuff.
What's next?
You remember how I've talked about making the Base Defense a clearer design? I think I'm going to incorporate the golem into the base defense as the big win condition (kill the spawnpoints, kill the golem).
So that'll be it. Have the Golem walk towards the base, you try to delay him with obstacles and kill him. Balance between delaying the golem and fighting off the smaller enemies.
This'll require finishing the attack stuff for the Golem. Cheers!
You can help!
I need you to tell me about how well your nausea holds up, and where things go weird if they do. Please comment here or in the discussion forum, or set me a tweet. I'm @reilaos.
Rock On (New Patch)
So I've ironed out the two main troubles I had in the previous post!
What's new
Golem level! Work in progress. Crawl around on a golem as he walks in a perfectly straight line through a chunk of valley. Tell me if anything behaves oddly.
Here's the approach to Jeb's back.
Here you can see the view of Jeb's armpit if you were to be sitting on a dragon who is in turn standing on Jeb's right thigh.
Along the way I had to tighten up some of the movement mechanics when clinging to walls. Hopefully you'll only notice good changes, if any.
This isn't really a complete gameplay loop. All he does is walk. You can't kill him or be killed by him or anything.
What's next?
Now that you can actually walk on him properly, Jeb needs more animations.
Pathfinding for Jeb. Right now he only walks in a straight line. Even if there's no ground beneath him.
Sound effects. For Jeb.
Build out the level. Have a win and a loss condition. I'm thinking "Kill Jeb before he reaches some endpoint".
Might sculpt out Jeb a bit more. His left arm's colliders sometimes make walking on him weird.
Golem Update (No Patch)
No playable patch this week, sorry! Just a written progress report. But look what I've got! This guy's been modeled, rigged, UV-mapped and animated (just a walk for now). His name is tentatively Jebediah, thanks to the suggestions of @SaidG23 and @theuntoldsitcom! He's got colliders that move with the animations and interact normally and everything.
George (the dragon) can climb all over him and transfer from body part to body part smoothly (for the most part). It seems like it wouldn't induce motion sickness any more than the normal movement would.
Jeb does have issues though, which is why he's not already out for you to play with. For some reason, if George's on the back side of any of Jeb's body parts as Jeb moves, George tends to slide off and down in this really nauseating way. If he tries to run forward, he can kind of keep up, though. I need to fix that. If he's on a side-face, bottom, or top, it seems fine though. Strange.
So, here's what I'll be working on in the coming weeks:
Fix that weird slide-y behaviour.
Have momentum for take-off from a moving object. As it is, if you're running 7 m/s (George's current max speed) on a piece of ground moving 10m/s and you jump to start flying, your speed will suddenly drop to 7 m/s. This suddenly slowdown is disorienting. Should be easy enough to fix.
Handle the case where you're flying away from Jeb but part of his body catches up to you. Flying towards is handled by George and his collision avoidance code, but if something sneaks up on him from behind, then it'll pass through him weirdly.
More animations for Jeb attacking, maybe swatting at his own body parts to get that pesky George off of him.
Sounds for Jeb
An actual level for Jeb to navigate. Some vague ideas (Not promises!) for what that might be:
Kill weak points on the golem before he reaches his destination.
Toppling over stone pillars to block his path.
Walls where he has to stop and destroy something before he can move on.
Maybe he spawns other small enemies that help destroy those obstacles?
The first two items on that list are the main things that are keeping me from releasing this level for you folks to play with. If I can't think of a good way to fix the third item, I might just be able to work around it by making sure nothing on Jeb moves faster than 7 m/s relative to the ground. That's probably for the best, in the end. Having fast moving 'terrain' like Jeb that moves in anything besides a straight line in a constant speed seems like it would be really nauseating.
So yeah, once I have those first two items squared away, you guys can see for yourself how it feels to ride a dragon on the body of a giant, walking golem.
If you want more spur-of-the-moment updates on game development, or maybe to give input on silly little things like names, maybe give me a follow on Twitter. I'm @reilaos! Love ya.
