Posts

May 19th Update

I have been completely forgetting to post updates, but I have actually been working on stuff this entire month. I've added in the new special weapon system with a set of basic animations and particle effects, but the twist is the boss also has access to it - albeit in a different format. The goal of this is to make the player scramble for something vs the boss so that it injects a bit of freshness and alternative goals into the fight. I haven't implemented all the stuff I would like for it yet, but I'm getting close. I've also fixed a few other obscure and strange bugs that have existed since Godot 3 (one was a nasty race condition one) and made the projectile system more flexible. I'm starting to import some of the models into the Godot 4 version, so I should have some screenshots and videos in the next couple of months. Sera still needs a few more enhancements to her controller to make her prioritize certain things but I think I should have a working demo soon and...

April 8 Update

 There's still a few weird bugs, but the shapecast replacement for attacks work now, as does the shapecast for ground detection (and it slips on enemies as well). I added a bunch of particle effects to Sera's attacks and still need to recreate some of Rhys. At the very least I'm moving forward now instead of focusing on porting. I also tweaked how the animated texture for the slash attack works. A few animations were recreated to not be garbage.

April 2 Update

Some new animations to replace the older and jankier ones. Still fixing up a few things like changing the old attack areas to shapecasts. Since these are more sensitive I'd like to try disabling them when characters are out of range in order to try to optimize. Right now there's no slowdown with just two entities (player and boss) but I don't know what'll happen once I have 10ish enemies on screen at once, and not all of them need to be sweeping with the shape when out of range. Still some small issues, the raycast for enemy sliding isn't working so well so I might have to change to shapecast for that too and there's some weirdness with the homing attacks as well as the scene slow and camera shake is either weak or isn't working. Sword particle effects are back in as are some gauntlet ones. I just replaced gauntlet 1 and 2 so I'll be putting particle effects back in for those and working on some for Sera. I'll probably get back to sound effects creat...

March 25 Update

The reasons for the infrequent updates is cause there's only so much to talk about upgrading and that was all I was doing, no new and shiny stuff. It took me quite a while because the combat system is still pretty complex. Things are looking good though, I've got most combat system stuff working and in Godot 4. I fixed a few issues coming from 3->4 with bugs that never really showed up in 3.  Added a new simple camera that just passively follows the player around so that if there's no target its always moving to go behind the character. Also just generalized some things with the targeting camera since it was hardcoded before and stabilized it a little. Lots of small cleanup things. Due to the changes in Godot 4, I made it so the player character will slip on slopes when landing on enemies because having the player land on the enemy and stay there was a funny occurrence that was happening more than it should have been. The opposite can also happen but its far rarer. One t...

Godot 3.5 to 4 Conversion C#

I've started the process of converting my C# godot 3.5 proj to 4.0 since Godot just hit RC 1 for Godot 4. I decided it'd be worth it for the efficiency gains but I was also pleased to see the extremely simplified move and slide method as well as the grounded and constant velocity additions to the CharacterBody3D class. I figured given the amount of time it takes to bake a simple lightmap I should probably just upgrade to 4 first. I ran the auto converter which seems a tad buggy and changes a few things it shouldn't but it seems mostly ok. Major things to note are: Luckily I haven't really gotten far in actually making maps so all i have are prototype maps that would've been tossed out anyways. Most of the work has been on the characters, so rebuilding them should get me most of my progress back. I'll probably have to reanimate the particle effects, luckily I didn't have very many. On top of that my old file structure was a mess so this gives me a chance to r...

Feb 6 Update

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 Not dead yet, I've been busy recently and without my main computer so things have been a bit slow. I've started putting in some meshes into the map and put an especially large one in (some test generated terrain from blender). This took a chunk of fps out (and I'm pretty sure it isn't the number of polygons) so I'm pretty sure at this point using lightmaps will result in the biggest performance boost since right now everything is dynamically lit. I'm also changing up the crappy gauntlet dash and have a new idea to put in. Quick screenshot of how things look now. I'll be putting in a lot of tall grass later and considering some far away meshes that'll be obscured by fog. I might just go and buy some assets for that since I don't want to spend the time on that (I know they'll take me a stupid amount of time to texture) and I'm betting if I put in some really heavy fog some mountains in a slightly different stylized artstyle shouldn't resul...

Jan 1st Update

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I've added in custom key binding in the pause screen. It is via a very rudimentary place holder that doesn't look too good, but it works, and it'll be useful for the demo. There's no checking to see if two actions share the same key yet, so the user is going to have to be careful. The gui will be easy to replace later with actual assets and I wrote it so adding a new button is a simple one line function call. I'm still thinking about what to add to the gauntlet weapon that'll make it more unique and also helpful. Eventually the crappy hp bar will be replaced too. Also threw together a toon shader, mainly focusing on faces first. It's extremely simple, relying on a gradient texture and the usual normal dot light calculation, the lighting color is factored into the calculation, but multiple lights do not stack in intensity since this would result in a lot of weird looking transitions. The plan is to use a custom gradient texture, based on each materials/enviro...