Nova's Boss Fight, Nova conversation art sneak peek, and some optimization..

Heyo everyone! As you know, this week was focusing on the Catiya2's boss fight with Nova. This fight had me in for some animation, and we can consider it an introduction to how Nova will fight you. I find her to be quite a bit more challenging than previous bosses, but she is always subject to some balancing. I want to also give a big thanks to a member from the discord, Lunatic Overlord for helping me narrow down the cause of Titas' performance issues on some systems. Due to this I also got around to greatly optimizing Titas this week.

Well! Let's get into the progress report!

Nova will fight you as herself... no tricks, no machines... just her and her power. Nova will have 2 phases on Catiya. Her first phase will have 4 different attacks.

1. Beam

This is an attack most of you are familiar with from Zol'gan. The main difference here is that it is much faster to shoot.

2. Missile Barrage

This barrage will fire 10 missiles that will hone in on the red indicators shown. You will need to position yourself accordingly to avoid these.

3. Flurry

Ora Ora!. Nova will unleash a flurry of energy balls in your direction. This attack starts off fairly slow, but ramps up as it goes on. Do note that these balls can be barrel-rolled.

4. a)Vortex:

Nova will slowly pull you to the center. Being in the core of the vortex will hurt you, so pull away as much as possible.

4.b)Blast

At the end of the vortex, Nova will let out a signalled blast. You will need to ensure you position yourself in between these despite being sucked in.

Once Nova's barrier is destroyed, she gets rather annoyed.

Uh Oh....

Phase 2 is fought in the same way as 1, but all of her attacks will be significantly enhanced.

1. Beam

The ring that Nova has created will mimic a couple of Nova's moves.

2. Missile Barrage

Missile Barrage will now shoot twice as many missiles. (I actually really like how this move looks hehe.)

3. Flurry

This one becomes quite troublesome, as like with the Beam, Nova's rings will duplicate this.

4.b) Vortex Explosion.

Vortex will now blast during, and throughout the Vortex. (The angle will be randomized between the 3.)

Nova may have access to 1 other attack in this fight, but I will need to set some other things up. This may come at a later week though. For now, the fundamentals of the fight are here.

That pretty much sums up the boss fight for Catiya, though I'm sure she will have much more to offer next time we meet her ;).

Other than that:

As mentioned before, there was also some experimentation, and an effective solution to performance issues on Titas. This is definitely nice to get out of the way.

Previously I had mentioned a Russian translation was in the works for SpunkStock. It has just finished up, and with some reworking of files it is now implemented. The release for that should be soon.

Oh! Also.... the craziest coincidence happened. Last week I showed off Aether's 2nd Hscene, and talking about the IK. I ended the post off with saying the IK breaks in the actual game, and I would need to find a solution to what is going wrong....well... literally like.. 2 days after this, AnyPortrait(The animation software) released an update making big improvements to IK... I installed it an... boom... it all works.... what timing... saved me a lot of time of troubleshooting. Thanks a ton to the AnyPortrait team for the good timing >.<. Actual anime timing.

That should pretty much sum up this week! Thanks again everyone for your support! Next week is going to be focusing on aspects of dialogue. I'm going to be writing the transmission dialogue in the level, along with doing a couple sequences with Nova. This means doing up a new conversation rig for Nova.

Alright! Catch you all next week!

-Regulus