v0.0.0.6 (Pre-Alpha)

ADDED

MINIMAP – A minimap to make the game a little less terrifying to traverse. The player is marked in white, NPCs in green, and enemies in red. The direction they are facing is also indicated. The scope in intentionally short, so you can only see a short distance around you. You will be able to upgrade this in the future focusing on the Second Sight, and Sound elements. My implementation is kind of funny, as it is simply an additional camera above the player’s head. Then a one-sided teardrop shape above the player, NPCs, and enemies.

NEW ENEMY – Zombies are gone, and replaced with this new enemy! 10 HP and various sizes and speeds. Don’t get overwhelmed! This new enemy’s model was acquired for free with an open license. I took the liberty of unwrapping, texturing, rigging and animating it. Complete with walk/chase, attack, and death animations. (I am quite pleased with the death animation!) These new enemies come in different sizes, and that size is reflected in their icon on the minimap.

NPC WANDERING – If NPCs are idle for too long, they will begin to wander around. They will do so for a random amount of time, and then go back to their idle state. If they are in “follow” mode, they will get back into range once they are done wandering.

NPC PANIC – NPCs will now enter a panicked state if they or their protector (player) is injured by an outside force. These are only under two conditions: 1.-NPC is attacked by enemy or player. 2. Player is attacked by enemy. They will not panic if the player inflicts magic damage on themselves. The panic state is basically 10 seconds of running in a random direction. If there are more injuries during this time, that 10 seconds starts again. Once they are calmed down, they will go back to their idle state. Meaning they will follow if that is their instruction, or they will wander after a few seconds.

ENEMY AND NPC HEALTH BARS – Green health bars for NPCs, and red health bars for the new enemy. It will show above their heads, and only show if they are not 100% or 0%. It helps at a glance seeing if your NPCs are under attack. It also makes is so you can tell if you are doing damage, as aiming can be a struggle sometimes. (Also you can see a injured enemy in the dark this way.)

MESSAGE SYSTEM – Information is now given to the player via a message system on the middle-left hand side of the screen. This tells the player information like: “You injured a human.”, or “A human has taken damage.” Or “a human has been killed.” In the future, this will also tell the player about the items that they have picked up.

BOBBING, FOOTSTEPS, AND TILTING, OH MY – To give a bit more immersion to the camera, I added a bob to the walk. I think it is subtle enough to not annoy people who dislike head-bobbing in games (like me). I also added a footstep sound to go along with it… surprisingly tricky! I also added a slight tilt to strafing that I think gives the game a more fast-paced feel when kiting enemies.

FPS TOGGLE – Using the [~] key, you can turn on the on-screen fps counter. This thing swings every which way for me, but I am hoping it will help with some performance insight. My main computer hovers around 150 fps for the most part, while my laptop (With integrated graphics) can only do 30. I would be curious where your performance is at.

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CHANGED

2nd+ RUNS HAVE DIFFERENT GOAL – Mostly just a proof-of-concept, now the second run will have a longer distance, and more humans than the first. This groundwork will help in the next update.

NO MORE SAVING – That is to say, no more _manual_ saving. This was proving to be a nightmare to program, and I think it is likely to lead players to soft-locking themselves in a situation where they have to start the game over. The game now auto-saves when you reach a city. (Specifically, when the city screen says “Welcome to [Insert City Name Here]”. )This way, if you make bad trades, or bad hires, and you die, you can make better choices. The runs shouldn’t take too long, so losing small bits of progress is the price to pay.

NEW GAME/CONTINUE BUTTON ON MAIN MENU – Hitting “Continue” will load the last save, while hitting “New Game” will erase the old save the moment the new game starts. If there is no save to load, there will not be an option here. Remember that the game only saves when you reach a city. So, lets say you have a save, but you hit the “New Game” button, and then immediately quit. When you start the game again, that original save is gone, and there is no new save to load from, so you have to start again. There will be a pop-up later, but for now, just know!

TREES AND GRASS – I added a collection of 7 different trees, and removed the old ones. They are much more realistic looking, without taking themselves too seriously. They are a bit heavier to run than the older trees, but it requires much less of them to make the forest. The grass is the same as before, but I removed the animation from them. In a game that is mostly dark, it seemed like a distraction, and there was that weird glitchy-ness when you got too far away from spawn. This way, it is less performance loss.

ENEMY AI OVERHAUL – Old AI bad and clunky. New AI good and easily adjusted! States include: Idle, Chase, Attack, and Death. Enemy should target player more than the NPCs. In the future, depending on the enemy, they will have their preference to go after either the player, NPCs, or mercs.

NPC AI OVERHAUL – Used most of the new enemy AI and put in the NPC behaviors. Include: Idle, Wander, Chase, Panic, and Death.

TERRAIN SPAWN OVERHAUL – Most of my time in this build was spent reconfiguring the terrain generation so that it wasn’t so heavy. It is now at a point where I think I can move forward. This was my 3rd time making this from scratch…

ENTITY DE-SPAWN – Enemies and magic bolts now fall through the ground when they are de-spawning, no longer vanishing in an instant.

NPCs HAVE MORE HEALTH – NPC health has increased to 10. At least for the time being. They can take 5 hits from an enemy, or 5 metal bolts, or 10 light bolts from the player.

NPCs DO NOT FOLLOW BY DEFAULT – You will now need to start each run by telling the NPCs to follow you. (or not, if you want them to die without you.) This is due to a few factors. Forces the player to use the feature that may help them in the future when the game gets harder, and also lends to a tutorial phase in the future versions of the game. Also makes a little sense if you consider these humans are waiting for you to come out. You finally do, and they are awaiting your orders.

.EXE – The game is now all contained in one single .exe file, no .pkg files needed! This might get flagged by Windows Defender or Antivirus, but I would hope by now you can trust me.

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FIXED

ENEMIES NO LONGER GET STUCK IN THE TERRAIN – Not sure what was causing that… but it’s fixed now.

RANDOM CRASHES SHOULD BE FIXED – I haven’t had the game crash at all on me for this build. Let me know if you have any crashes.

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KNOWN ISSUES

NPCs start 2nd+ runs in panic mode. Easy fix, but will be for next time.

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SKIPPED

CAMERA SHAKE WHEN SHOOTING – I decided to skip this, as the math was a bit complicated, and frankly doesn’t make much sense for the spells that are being cast. When there are more robust spells in the future, a camera shake might make sense and I will figure it out then.

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WARNING

If you played v0.0.0.5 at all, you will have a save file on your system. When starting this version, I highly recommend hitting “New Game” overwriting that old save, as I have no clue what will happen when you load from a previous version of the game!