Animation! UI, SFX, and some nice planning done!

Heyo everyone! This week has been a bit of a weird one for me. It felt like it just kinda zoomed by. Definitely wasn't keeping track of days well. That being said! Some nice progress was made, and something really neat is that we went over some pretty cool ideas/concepts. I'll get into the progress report and may go over some of these!

Right out the gate I'm going to start with what was done first. The animation! In this scene there will likely be a lot of variances throughout the game, but for now, here are a few loops.

There are a couple more, but I won't flood the post with them. In the future you will likely be assisted by your comrades, not just the robo-hand ;).

I will also tinker with some other hair options, and facial expressions. I'm going to be treading very carefully in this aspect though for scope's sake.

NEXT!

I decided I wanted to up my game for Menuing/UI in Star Lust.

Here's an example of what the level selection UI may look like. I wanted things to be a little more thematic, and have a lot more animation and fluff to them. The character portrait shown when hovering will be whatever unlockable character represents that planet. (Catiya has no unlockable character, so it just shows the general).

Right now this is a very early rendition of the main menu screen, but here are some of the main button animations.

I have started setting up the bridges between scenes as a result of the UI work as well (menuing, to gameplay, and back)

I reallly wish I could showcase the SFX involved. I put together SFX for all of the menuing, along with many additional sounds in-game including: Barrel roll, deflecting lasers(during roll), Heal pick ups idle, and grabbing, better "miss" sounds (if you hit obstacles with lasers). I will likely be uploading an actual public announcement on this game in the very near future. The new SFX along with the music will be present in it.

Now there were some other small things I added as well:

>A slight screen shake when being hit. Nothing super distracting, but something really help register that you got clunk'd.

>I also actually went through and added colliders to all the buildings in the level (ya... there were no colliders yet ahah).

>I changed how the mouse controls work. This should allow the player to adjust sensitivity, and it should also allow the mouse to properly lock in WebGL(browser), and other OS builds.

>Reworked some of the enemy's positioning along with refining/tuning in on better dialogue trigger positions.

>Set up a script for scaling an image in the background as you progress (This is potentially for something I may showcase next week.)

>Made the simple system for Ally chases to address success, or failure.

FAIL:

SUCCESS:

In this instance upon success the ally will shoot down an enemy fighter for you. Failure will cause them to leave, and the support is not given. How helpful the ally is may change depending on the level or situation!

The gif compression puts some nasty grit on some of these images. I can definitely say the game looks much more crystal clear ahaha.

-----PLANNING?----

With that said, the team has spent a good amount of time discussing upcoming things, and getting organized for the next level. You might be thinking "2nd level? We hardly know anything about the 1st!" Well.... you're right. There is still a decent amount for me to finish up and polish in the first level, but while I finish these things up, it is an ideal time for the other members to get the concepts and modelling done for the second level, so we can jump right in when the time comes.

I likely won't share too much on the next level at this time, but I will say that it is a "moon" level, and it will bring the first unlockable ally.

At the moment just nicknamed "The Merc" during development. She will be the character associated with the moon level. We have the concepts for the level done up, and our modeller has started working on textures and environment models for it.

Once the moon level is in production, that is likely when I will be putting polls back on the map, and getting this patreon page running in proper flow like with SpunkStock. All characters after "The Merc" will be decided by polls. As mentioned before there are plans for a total of 6 unlockable characters.

This means after "The Merc" there will be 5 more characters to come. There are less characters than there was in SpunkStock, but this is so we can have more scenes/interactions with each character.

Some things that were also discussed, which I WON'T go in to detail yet (I just really want to say). Amhidden has drawn up detailed concepts for 3 of the other characters, and I got to say... they are sick, and I can't wait for the polls to come, where they will be announced.

A lot of these last few months have really been about fleshing out what a "typical build" consists of in terms of the development cycle of builds. With the first level and the core coming together, there is some final decisions to make on how to proceed with the development and the pacing of builds.

Alright guys! This was a bit of a loaded one, but I hope it's ignited a bit more excitement for the game. In this next week I will likely be focusing on polishing, and fixing up/balancing a few things. There are a few game design choices I need to nail down and decide on as well. I will likely also be setting up the Hscene reviewing/gallery system.

I guess you could say I am going to be pushing to get the last of what I'd consider "a build" done. That doesn't necessarily mean the build will be released right away, but I will be thinking a lot about how I want to handle builds in these early stages here.

Thanks everyone! I'll catch you next week! ^^

-Regulus