Devlog 2

This weeks new build introduces new level objects and some key mechanics to a basic degree. Have also been working on some loosely related objects/mechanics that were needed.

Level Expansion

The first iteration of the game had a very small play size. Have adjusted the sizes of objects and playfield to allow for both more horizontal and vertical movement. Camera has also been zoomed out as I felt it was a bit too close to players and didn't allow for a big enough view of the horizon when moving to the top of the map.

Gate Interaction with enemies

The Gate is an important mechanic as players will need to stop enemies from reaching it and breaking it open. Enemies now damage the gate when standing next to it, this has an internal cooldown of 1 second at the moment. Currently the enemies don't have any animations to break it down but they will be tied to the cooldown later on. I didn't want to add a health bar to the gate so instead opted to add some health thresholds and some tied some animations to represent it breaking. The Thresholds are roughly > 100% HP > 66% > 33% > 0%.

Spawners

Basic spawners have been added and prefabbed. At the moment spawners will spawn enemies at set intervals. Didn't get around to adding a mechanic for them breaking or spawning but will get both of these done. Players will be able to close these spawners by standing on them for a short period while certain enemy types will be able to open more spawners using the prefab.

Player Rendering In front/Behind Objects

Players are now able to walk behind trees and other objects in the environment. This is being done by changing the players sprite layer when touching a specific invisible prefab. Works nice at the moment and independently for each player, may need to make some modifications down the line for enemies projectiles etc.

Moon

The Moon will essentially act as a level timer and difficulty indicator for the game. The higher up and closer to the middle of the screen indicates midnight aka halfway/ the hardest spike in difficulty. Have added it as a background object and have it moving from one side of the screen to the other slowly. Plan to have it change colour hue to indicate waves/difficulty as well. When it goes over the horizon that should also end the game/level. Maybe a victory screen with the sun rising before it ends though.

Other progress

Have also got started on some non level related ideas such as the players health and mana bar as well as hit detection for melee attacks/blocking and cooldowns while locking movement simultaneously.

Feedback

Object layering

Object layering has been implemented (Feedback from last week) as detailed above in Player Rendering

Art looks smudged

Had a look into the import settings for the sprites.  After changing the pixels per unit, Filter mode and Compression they now actually look like pixel art.

Objects should have some shadows and the moon should have some kind of glow or hue.

Will definitely get started on this soon. May start of with static shadows but could also look into having the moon emit some kind of post processing effect that affects the direction of shadows on other objects.

Player movement is sometimes jittery

Have also noticed this but haven't looked into fixing properly. Could either be related to the camera or the player movement itself.