Devlog #2 - Developing Features

Check out Heartbeast's Tutorial here:  https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9FzW-m48fn2SlrW0KoLT4n5egNdX-W9a

New Music

This week I sat down with a blank Bosca Ceoil project to create a Boss Fight song. I started with just bass and a drumkit hoping to get a dark, deep, and suspenseful song. About midsong, I added some deep electric guitar chords that sounded good. One thing I really didn't like about my original two songs is that the transitions in the songs can be a little drastic. Adding or removing instruments midsong or transitioning from lines that repeat a couple of times to a different set of repeating lines just sounds disconnected. This time around I listened to the transitions on repeat and reworked them until I got them just right. I also tried to get the beginning and end to loop a bit better. The first song I created is still my favorite to listen to but the transitions of the boss song are my best.

New Art

In Aseprite this week I got to work creating a sprite for the boss. I took the player sprite and removed all walking and rolling animatons. Once I had the frames I wanted, I got to work recoloring and removing the cape. My original plan was to cut the bat enemy's wings and paste them onto the player character but they were way too small and low detail. So I googled "Evil Wings" and found the perfect set. I started off trying to place one pixel at a time. After that didn't work out I instead tried outlining the wings in one connected motion. I tried this a couple of times, chose the one that looked the closest, and edited it to make it look better. Once I had the wings right I colored them the same colors as the bats and used those colors to create a bit of corruption all over the sprite. I was a bit worried that It looked weird since you couldn't see a second wing  but later in the week, when I was finishing the idle animation, I added a wing flap that showed off the second wing. Next I need to create the art for the damage and health upgrades and a cover image. I also want an easy and clear "How to Play" on the start menu so I may have to create art for that as well.

Boss Fight

I decided on four attacks for the boss, an attack for left, forward, and right and one where the boss summons bats for the player to fight. These attacks would either be chosen at random or occasionally targeted to where the player was located. I also wanted the boss to become invincible after taken a certain amount of damage and have a scripted summon attacked vs the normally random choice of attack. Once the summoned bats were killed, the boss would be damageable again. I did eventually get all this working except the "invincible" phase. The boss determines which attack to do next based on when an animation finishes and a timer so the boss isn't always throwing out attacks. I think this causes the invincible phase to sometimes cut short.

Playtesting

As soon as I added the Giant Bat Boss I announced a mandated playtesting halt by my wife on the game. Maybe this was a bit of reverse psychology to make her want to play it more? Maybe I just wanted to impress her with how far I'd come in a week? Maybe I felt she needed a break from me constantly bringing it up and asking her to play it? Not sure really. Either way I didn't ask her to try the game again until the boss fight was functional, I had expanded the world a bit, and I had implemented upgrades and  the scoreboard. It seemed she was pleasantly surprised with my progress and actually gave some great feedback. The world was confusing and maze like. It didn't really give the player any indication of where to go. Hearts dropped all the time from grass and bats which made it a bit disappointing that you couldn't pick them up right away. Also falling to the boss and having to restart completely was a bit punishing. 

Game is "soft" releasing this coming Sunday! By soft releasing I just mean that I want to make the game publicly playable but continue to work on it. I'd like to stop working on the project by the end of February.