We're starting to reach the end of development for the demo, I can feel it in my bones.  I know this because I'm procrastinating and trying to avoid doing all of the boring bug clean up work that needs to be done for the game.  This is a good sign even though it pains me because my task list seems never ending.

Art

Art this week has been a bit slower than usual.  We spent the week working on the last remaining powerups and they have been slow going because I needed to fix a lot of the code with them.  They weren't broken exactly but they were a common sore spot, being either underpowered of just flat out now interesting. As such I had to redesign them and then get help from ref to finish them off.  On top of this I actually needed to do a lot of VFX work that didn't require art, so it's been a journey.

The 2 powerups we did redesign though have been Ethereal Grace and Zoomies.  Ethereal Grace makes the player phase through everything for 3 seconds.  As an added touch I buffed it by also making the player deal damage when he walks through enemies.  I did this to encourage riskier melee play where the player will attack and just as he's surrounded phase out and run through the mob.  It should be a lot of fun.  On the vfx side, I made a shader the blurs the player's sprite while the effect is on, and I also asked ref to make a little ghost appear to show that it's active! I think it's really cute.

On the zoomies side, the ability originally gave you a speed boost when you activated it which was kind of dull.  So to make it more exciting, I also make it so that you drop little electrical mines as you run so the further you go the more explosives you leave for the enemies! I think the traps look really cool. On top of this I replaced my stock Car Revving sound which was so stupid it was actually kind of funny (rest in peace car noises) and added an after image effect to the player so you see a trail to suggest how fast he's running.  I think it turned out well.

The other 2 powerups we're working on this week were deflect/absorb powers which reflect enemy projectiles.  This one was a real challenge for multiple reasons, BUT I'm proud to say that revisiting the code, I made an EXTREMELY modular deflect and absorb system which was actually very fun to expand.  The reason this powerup took so long is because initially I wanted the player to just deflect bullets, but as the Attack Pattern System I developed became a more core feature of the game, I realized the player would have to be able to deflect/absorb enemy attack patterns as well.  I spent a good 2 days implementing the deflect/absorb logic in the attack pattern, which wasn't exactly difficult, but I needed to account for all of the different little projectiles and damage of time effects.  It was a lot of work!

This is what we're mocking up as the general absorb animation

Music

On the music side, nothing to report.  Juan said he was making a track then disappeared into his music cave.  I should probably check on him and see what crazy stuff he's concocting...

Programming

I'll be the first to admit that most of the programming this week has been updating my powerup system, but I did finally manage to start making the Resource system as well! I started by adding all of the resource variations to the save system then started building out.  Made resource nodes that scale their health with player level that spawn in the level.  It's actually quite fun to beat the crap out of them and harvest the resources mid fight!

After that I spent the time brushing up the upgrade screen so that I could pay for upgrade with multiple resources.  I also took the time to clean up the UI and I think the difference is night and day, I realized I really hated the old look, PLUS with this implementation, controller support is much smoother.  no more wrestling with button navigation!

Old version - (Yes I'm a child and write "eat my butt" as place holder text.  It actually was very funny when it didn't initialize properly and I'd see this message come up. Highly recommend a little stupidity when working to keep things interesting)

New!

The last thing I did worth reporting on this week is update the screen shots for the level to kind of show what the player should expect when playing.  The old images I had were a simple picture of the game being played.  It was really zoomed out and ugly.  To fix this, I set up a scene and zoomed in the camera to show some of the key enemies you'll be fighting.  I also wrote a script that would let me take a screenshot of the game without playing it (the unity recorder plugin forces you to enter play mode to snap a pic) and export it to my screenshot folder.  It was more work than I expected, but I think it really ended up cleaning up the UI so you can see the levels.

The third level is clearly still placeholder.  You can see how zoomed out and ugly the old pictures were :p

Next Week

Next week will be a big one because it will be the end of a lot of things.  For one thing, I'm aiming to tie off powerups entirely.  We have 2 left to go and all I need is a little more art to call it finished.  I'm really really really excited to be done with it.  I want to show the game off already and play test the new build.

On top of that, I'm hoping to be done with the resources system as well and have it balanced so players can't just buy the most overpowered upgrades in the game right away.  I think I'll need to spend some time fixing it up and also I want to make a little notification event that shows an !! sign on the main menu when the player can afford a new powerup.  I've noticed players forget to check their upgrades so I want to remind them when they have enough!

Finally, I want to move on to the thing I'm most excited about, which is updating the main menu screen.  I have a great idea for how it will look and I'm going all in with the pixel art here.  I realized I need this after watching some of Thomas Brush's lets plays where he reviews games people make.  A strong main menu is essential to excite players to play the game, since it's the first thing they see.  I'm going to take the time and get it right before the demo.

So what can I say, lots of fun things to come.  I want to start playtesting and sharing the game with the world so stay tuned!