Posted March 15, 2022 by JHyde
Another devlog is needed to put ideas into writing.
The game may be getting too big to wrap my head around all at once. I have been focusing on minute details for too long and need to focus on the big picture...or something.
I added a new playable character basically. You can now disembark from the UFO and walk around on the ground. I was scared to try to implement this for a long time because I thought it would break a bunch of stuff. Implementing it has gone surprisingly well so far. I made animations for the alien character for each direction. Then depending on the direction of velocity it plays the corresponding animation. I do this using a dictionary and am kinda proud of the code I wrote, because I came up with it off the dome.
I also added the ability to "go inside" certain houses, really the character just disappears for 5 second and an animation will play, then the character pops back in. I haven't added the items you will collect yet, but I'm thinking they will be common household items that the aliens need for some reason.
I'm currently working on adding a stun gun you can use to stun the NPCs for a short time. You can then go ransack their house and get away before they wake up. I could easily make a laser gun and have the cops have guns, but I want to keep it relatively non violent. Just kidnapping and probing. Right now you hold down left click to aim the gun then release to fire, but we will see how this feels once its fully implemented.
So far so good. I haven't ran into any big road blocks like I have in the past. I think I can chalk that up to getting better at code, and knowing the Godot engine better. Even if this game ends up being a scatter brained mess, I can honestly say I have learned a lot making it. If I could tell my previous self some advise, I'd just say have patience.