potatoptarmigans gamedev blog

 Working on some necessary features for first boss (spontaneous enemy spawning). I am also revisiting Sera's health loss mechanic. I'm going to remove the health loss on basic attacks (though health loss will be bigger for certain things like the oneshot attacks, mainly because using those might help you avoid even heavier health loss.) I think it's a little too difficult to manage for some people whom I've seen die in the game because of Sera's health loss mechanic more than anything else.  I plan to introduce more enemies as a result, to sort of "overwhelm" the players into having to use Lea's limited ammo instead of just hanging back and letting Sera do all the work, although I guess if players are good at juking I'll allow it, may as well be a legit way to play. Later enemies will be faster to the point Lea cannot outrun them and they will specifically target Lea.

It's the big update. Updated things on itch io with new binaries. 1. Visual overhaul. New mainmenu, updated lighting, updated GUI, updated particle effects. Replaced all prototype models and icons. More detail added. Lower resolutions are better supported now. A prologue scene has been added with some extra stuff. 2. Added a massive amount of fixes and nice to haves, Sera will automatically open doors now, have fun calling her to Lea from the other corner of the map. Key config fixed and actually saves. GUI elements scroll properly now and fit more resolutions. Enemies dissolve on death. Cameras will focus on targets of interest when applicable. 3. Fixed a lot of bugs in general. 4. A rewrite to a lot of stuff. 5. New cutscene art. 6. Lea can talk to Sera by interacting with her 7. Way smaller filesize, lots of unnecessary bloat was removed. The first boss fight is the next thing I'm working on.

The pathfinding is way better now. Sera and enemies can now navigate to a spot on the map and open all the doors on the way without prompting (Unless the door is locked, this is actually a bug in old ALAWT, Sera and enemies can open doors Lea doesn't have the required items for).The return home button can even let her run all the way across the map to Lea. Everyone's obstacle detection raycast is way better and Sera's a lot less likely to get stuck on stuff. I basically ended up rewriting the move state and the obstacle detection (which also had logic errors). Now it's not just cleaner and readable code, it's a lot more stable. It was a bit tricky though because just shooting a raycast directly towards a target sometimes led to weird results. In particular, a raycast from Sera to the lower platforms after the heavy bunker door would cause her to think there was an obstacle (the bunker door) between her and those lower platforms. She would then try to get to the lowe...

I did a lot of necessary but boring stuff. I modularized the interactable system so now it's a lot more flexible than it was before. In the past I could only have an animated interactable or one that could be picked up. Now Interactables can do both, and have extra functionality tacked on them. Fixed a countless number of bugs ranging from the enemies not pushing the players when hitting them to preventing Lea from peeking past some room occluders. Added in nice things like restoring interactable states after loading (so you don't have to resolve certain puzzles after saving and reloading. Restoring current weapon held on the characters as well as removing key items after they've been used. I rewrote some convoluted code where the logic made no sense to me and it also fixed multiple bugs. Gui element lists scroll now. Basically things are a lot more polished now, with just a few things left like needing to save custom key configs and accessibility. Working on getting a dysl...

 I'm replacing a bunch of cgs in ALAWT. It's really forcing me to try harder at drawing and I guess that's good but it also kind of sucks. I've got 2 done, but I'd like to finish up a third before considering any sort of update. I've also rewritten some lore to make things slightly more mysterious. I feel like Lea was too knowledgeable before and I want her to be less omniscient.

 Updated the very old crappy falling animations with unique ones for both Sera and Lea. They'll also do a landing animation when falling. While the characters can't really jump (mainly due to control constraints) I'm planning on some puzzles that'll require going up and down. I updated the menu and dialogue GUI to be consistent, and the dialogue boxes are all in dark mode now instead of an eyebleeding white. I also updated the main menu with a new one. I'm still debating how I'll color it and there's some improvements I could make (I am held back by my skill in 2d art), but at least it's better than the current placeholder. The last bits of visual overhaul I have to do is fix up some of the old particle effects. Sera's slash has already been updated to be a gooey red one to fit her mutated arm. Then I plan to test and put out an (small) update. The big one will contain the boss and more character interactions as well as some rewritten lore. Ideally, ...