Devlog #6 Maximum Mobility

Hello! It's been a few months. How have you been? How's the family?

Well now that the pleasantries are out of the way. Let's talk about the latest updates. We've been working on bug fixes and adding various elements to the game. I'll rattle off everything in a bit and explain what we've been up to since our last update/devlog.

First let's talk about what's been added.

NEW ADDITIONS

Character Selection 

- We've had 2 player characters for a while now but we wanted each player to be able to select their character. Currently only the first player gets to choose but it's a start.

New Ways to control your character

- We've added a dash option with a cooldown, -We've added fully rotational shooting with either the joystick or mouse

-The ability to run if you hold down the movement buttons long enough without shooting

- We've added strafing. So you can move and shoot in different directions. 

Animations

-Many of these new features required new animations and though they aren't complete they are very close to the general idea of what we want in the final product.

Upgraded Upgrading

-We did an entire UI and graphical overhaul of how upgrades are handled. Including experience orbs, a gauge and an upgrade menu that explains what the upgrades do. There's still more tweaking ahead but this is a huge improvement of what we've had in the past. 

Darker and Lighter

We've been messing around with lighting over the past few months and we implemented a test of a few different lighting ideas in this build. As a result we had to make some changes to the background to accommodate those changes. Let us know what you think of it. This is only the beginning stages of our lighting system and we are still tweaking what we like and what we dont like about it. More about our lighting journey later.

Particles and Tasty Gibs

-We've improved the grenade explosion 

-We added some chunks of bug bits when you get a kill

-We added particles to the experience orbs

Variety of Bugs

-While graphically the bugs don't look much different other than a few color changes, the bugs have lots of different characteristics now including speed and strength and even some with ranged shooting.

The Boss

-There has been a few changes to the boss. But I'll let you play the game to check that out for yourself. 

Bug Fixes

-Weird Boss respawn glitch after you kill it.

-Retrying the game no longer spawns you in random locations

- Your character no longer soft locks after dying

-Invisible Bullets hitting the player character have been removed.

Why so long since the last update? 

Well mostly because we've been learning new things, and while that can be interesting in its own right, it doesnt really translate immediately into an update for the game. 

We wanted to have something new to show everyone before we did another devlog and that meant buckling down and getting to work.

Since this project has been and will continue to be a side project for us we only have a few hours every couple of nights, and that means some weeks are super productive and other weeks we are pulled away into our other commitments.  Such as helping family memebers and gardening and our woodworking projects. 

Speaking of the garden, while the season has come to a close this year we were able to grow some new and interesting things including our peach trees, potatoes and sweet potatoes, that we hope to incorporate into a thanksgiving dish this year. If we do I'll be sure to share a picture of that. 

As for the woodworking projects? Well we generally hand craft christmas gifts and every year we have around 40-50 gifts to make and as you can imagine that takes up some time.

As for what have we been learning? Well we know this project and future projects will need a great deal more than just simple game loops, I've been studying OpenGL and looking into Vulkan, as well as Socket networking in case we wanted that for multiplayer. My brother has been building tools for story based projects in our future and we've also participated in a game jam, well actually  the OLC Code Jam. We are also going to be participating in another Game Jam in November the Game Off game jam, something we did last year that really pulled us into game development again after so many years.

What's next?

Well the list expands and contracts every update. We try to stay focused on the immediate tasks we also like to think about the Bigger picture as well.

Some more animations to round out the characters such as a grenade toss, and the melee attack that we are close to adding (dont think we forgot about the pocket chainsaw) some general cleaning up of various sprites and animations.

More bugs, more bosses, more upgrades, more weapons, more stages. 

Yeah there's plenty to do but we've been building a system that fits our framework and that takes time.

I hope you enjoy our latest build and let us know what you think. Thank you for checking us out and have a great day.

Stay Mighty out there Rangers