Hi everyone, welcome to my second DevLog for Dead End Dungeons, a new dungeon crawler with rogue like elements, and turn based combat.  

I recently decided that instead of using loading screens, I would instead start dungeon building at runtime, blocking the hallways out of the starting area with a cheap knockoff Elden Ring fog wall, and have the dungeon build while the player is selecting which 3 characters they will add to their party.   For the sake of this video I have 3 characters already assigned.  Once characters are selected, players can visit vendors, and spend gold and experience points to level up and prepare for the dungeon.   All while at the same time the dungeon will start filling in the rooms, as well as adding hidden traps and secret rooms that can spawn anywhere randomly.   

Like literally anywhere…even your first step into the dungeon apparently…

Using Unity Timelines, and keeping a uniform timeline format, the same 3 characters you select at start will pop up in the short cutscenes that occur when trigging events around the Dungeon.  In each timeline, keeping the first 3 bindings open for the active characters’ animators, and then the 4^th binding for the Cine machine Brain, I can substitute the active party into the cutscene without having to animate the same scene over and over again for each combination of characters you could select. 

The other characters in the cutscenes like the monsters and NPC’s, will only spawn if the player triggers the event, so the game won’t waste time loading 3d models for events that never trigger during the run. 

Finally, there have been some updates to the secrets in the dungeon.  While there have always been treasure hiding behind the walls, I have now added some much larger environments, so now players may find a hidden boss room, or a room with useful upgrades to help with their run.  

Just a reminder, this game is still very much in development…