Posted March 19, 2024 by 0x0
I was looking at various dashboard pages on Itch.io and saw - despite having only just posted my game as a minimal prototype that isn’t more than an animation demo of two asset packs - almost 20 people happened to view Elemental Fighters.
This got me thinking I should spend some time making this early prototype more accessible and appealing since people are looking at it. Things like on screen controls, and a banner image that doesn’t trick you into thinking its the game (lol).
I should probably also get the other elemental character animation tests hooked up so I can take a screenshot for the banner and let people test them out.
First thing lets make what we currently have more accessible by adding on screen controls.
Or so I thought. Instead I messed around getting some assets mocked up in engine for on screen controls. Later on I took a look at the game on mobile running in browser and it was visually broken. Couldn’t see the main character at all so that will be something to troubleshoot later.
Due to this issue I decided to postpone mobile support.
Thinking I want some form of air movement. Not as much as when grounded but something to adjust movement direction mid air. Worked on it a bit and felt the air movement is subtle but adds a lot. I also reworked the movement logic. Should feel basically the same just more clean under the hood.
Looking at what animation states still don’t have player states implemented left:
So I went ahead and get those hooked up. Special, Meditate, and Block will all have input actions to trigger their states but Damage, and Death are triggered from combat system interactions so I held off on those for now.
I am going to want to split a lot of animations into their Startup, Active, and Recovery frames as separate animations such as Block so it can be continuous blocking until key is released.
Next is to add actual combat mechanics so players can deal and receive damage.
For now I focused on doing knockback and hit-stop mechanics and will worry about the actual damage calculation later.
Both grounded and air normals have hitboxes which apply knockback now.
Fixed some issues with animation hitboxes not being aligned correctly.
Added hitbox keyframes for special attack.
Began working on a title screen / character select animation sequence where the camera will pan down from above the trees to show selectable characters hiding in the trees. When choosing them they will jump down to the play area.
Since the camera is going to pan down from above the trees I looked for some good cloud sprites to fill the empty space with visual interest.
Making the clouds scroll was a hole other problem I can write a separate devlog post about.
Decided on a working project title and redid the title screen to fit.
Title is “AKASHI” (intended with multiple meanings 証, 灯, 赤死)
Began working on the camera transitions from title, to character select, to combat.