This week Ref has been on an absolute tear and managed to create yet another boss from start to finish!  I feel like we have truly settled into a rhythm pumping out these bosses, so much so that the code is having trouble keeping up.   I just wanted to highlight his achievements as an artists as seeing the artwork come to life has been an absolute joy.  One more boss left to go and that is all of the enemies for the demo!

Introducing the desert grenadier.  This former bomb-slinger has always been a menace in his tribe, but that with the corruption of the blood moon he, and by extension his weapons, have morphed into something far more deadly and goopy to boot.

He is corrupted through and through and I love how that oozes out of not only his heart, but also his grenade launcher!

He comes armed with an armada of explosives and his trusty grenade launcher to reign down explosives and ruin your day.  This week I have been updating my AttackPattern director scripts to give him attacks equal to his coolness.  Not only does he melee, but now he flings dynamite to trip you up and fires large sprays of goo into the air that land randomly around the level while you're fighting.  It's truly an awesome battle!

Music

On the music side there isn't as much to report.  With the first level track done, Juan is hard at work on the second track.  Our key discovery from last week has been the utility of drums as a throughline through all of the tracks, which keeps the combat feeling exciting and frenetic.  First the first level done, I have done some research for good reference tracks for the second level.  Shout out to the Guacamelee 2 soundtrack as a great source of inspiration.  I can't wait to see what Juan comes up with

Programming

Like I said, the majority of the week has been spent focusing on updating the attack pattern director to better handle the needs of our new enemies.  But aside from that I've also dumped a ton more hours into the lighting system and getting it just right.  I feel like I've finally reached a revelation about lighting that has really helped me create the system.  I learned that lighting is not so much about the darkness, but rather the cool things you can do by attaching lights to things.  As such I've created fireflies in the spooky woods and dark torches light with my own particle system attachments to make the flames look a little more lifelike.  It really has been an eye opening journey to figure out how to use these systems to accentuate the game.  

In fact, I'm posting a day early because I just posted a new build of the game.  It shows off the new lighting and has all of the new bosses that Ref has been able to add.  I've very excited to see what you guys think. 

Next Week

As much as I want to leave lighting behind me, I think I have 1 more week's worth of work in this department.  With the first level finished, it's time to turn my sights on the second level and get the mood just right.  The second level has a full day/night cycle built in to transition from afternoon to a blood red sunset in the desert, to the darkest of nights. I'm excited to take what I've learned about lighting and apply it. 

Next week might also mark the final week of creating new content for the demo! After that it's all polish polish polish, as we get ready to put it out.  I can't wait to put it out, I'm very excited to show off bloodmoon survivors to the world!