Voidborne

Made nearly the entire second world and started working on the boss for that area! I tweaked some stuff too like the fog to make it look better and I also improved NPC dialogues and made it so that it reflects previous talks (mostly with Orren) Next devlog I'll have the boss finished and I'll move on to the final area!

I FINALLY FIXED IT okay so the gilded shard enemy was accelerating REALLY quickly for some reason and going really fast, but it was only that enemy and not any other enemy despite having the same script. the issue ended up being a single line that was re-assigning maxspeed to 2000, but ONLY for enemies that have the hover property (just moves it up and down). for the actual changes, i added two enemies, the lightsplitter a very tanky cube (i still have to make it knockback resistant) and the "gildedshard, a speedy little enemy that rushes from the sides. i also made a decent portion ofSolaria" (the second area) but I'll showcase it more in the next devlog when i actually have stuff added. there's also a new npc (vexin) near the beginning that gives some intro to how the people living in Solaria are.

Started working on the second of three areas, Solaria. It's essentially like the capital city of the world (Halcrya) and I'm planning to make it the biggest area! I made sprites for the ground brick and a marble tile, as well as the city buildings. I also added a fog shader that just overlays some moving pixels on screen so that it looks cooler! I also added another npc to the first area (his name is Orren) but I can't showcase that in this devlog since I was showing what Solaria looks like. I have a ton of levelbuilding to do with Solaria, and I need to make new enemies too. I'm probably going to re-sprite some of the ground tiles at some point they look kinda mid.

Camera effects and refactoring! My code is genuinely so bad but I kinda need to fix it if I want to have any chance at finishing the two other areas I have planned. Once I add camera locking (lock camera to a certain area) I should be finished the first area (finally)

Made a system for applying effects onscreen! I started off with it being a function in my global script that just instantiated a scene with the effect and another that cleared it, but as it turned out that system was HORRIBLE and really buggy. So after making that I decided to re-make it all by making it a single function that just modifies pre-existing nodes with func parameters. Took a long while but it works perfectly now so I'm happy! The current screen effects include shake, vingette, and glitch, and I'm probably adding noise/fog too since I have ideas on where it could be used!

Redrew some of the enemies and sprites! Also worked on adding shaders and other effects that can be triggered from any Dialogic timeline (e.g. a glitch effect and a noise effect) I'm also fixing little issues with the map that i see because it was kinda sloppily made at first.

After hours of debugging I finally got it to save the state of finished dialogues and collected items to the file. The player can no longer recollect items after quitting and rejoining and dialogues wont replay! I had so many issues but eventually got them all sorted out!

Making the world look better now! The new bricks makes it a billion times better. Im also refactoring/revamping some systems to make it a little bit less janky. I'll probably be redrawing the enemy sprites too, they look kiinda mid.

Better attack, boss movement, and a cutscene at the end that's still a big WIP! I'm also working on adding a save system that saves whether you've collected certain items around the map/killed bosses!

The sprite of the first boss (Lethos) now changes the more damaged it is. SoM bugs pushed this devlog to 5h 44m I spent like 15 doing this 😭

The player can now hit and damage the boss. For some reason it just would NOT work no matter what I did. The issue turned out to be collision layers and masking so it works now!

Working on the boss fight now! It's in a very early stage but the basics are down, all I need now is to implement better progression as the boss fight goes on, such as some text lines and phase changes. If this devlog appears as being over 7 hours long, that's probably bc of the SoM/Hackatime messup.

Respawn system! It automatically saves the respawn to the save file too so if you quit the game and rejoin it'll put you back to where you were! The game automatically saves at void wells

Animation for collection! Again as with all the recent devlogs I also worked on making the map more navigable! I'll be working on adding checkpoints now and respawning!

The player can now collect void fragments which contribute to their max health. There's no proper animation for it yet but the whole backend part works!

The system now saves your total hearts and damage to a file! You can also see how much damage you've taken now bc it shows a greyed heart instead of nothing

Same as the previous devlog. For some reason it didn't fully count my time? Photo is of the area's boss arena I'm working on!

Biiig time diff since SoM was down for a while. Worked on a ton of worldbuilding and I'm currently working on adding things that encourage the player to explore (like extra hearts, better weapons, etc!) since I want this game to be decently lengthy. At least compared to the last story game I made which was barely 15 minutes long.

Custom font looks so good!

Worked on a better transition and also worked on improving the beginning sections of the game. Up next is probably finishing up the intro area (The Outlands) and adding an introduction to the second part!

Added an intro cutscene and just general progress on the first stage too. The orb is a shader that slowly breathes and it looks so cool! Working on the transitions between sections and making the intro feel nice and smooth right now.

More levelbuilding! I added some outlines to make it look better. I made some fixes with the parallax bg too. I'm also currently drawing a sprite for the portal that will eventually teleport the player ahead at the end of the level!

I had a massive bug with the dialogue trigger where it would keep pointing to errors in the actual Dialogic scripts... it took me so long to fix it and I don't even know what did it, I remade the system again and it just worked..? Was kind of painful but I'm just happy it works. I also added a jump orb but the majority of the time in this devlog was spent debugging that issue 💀

Added actual dialogue and a way to disable movement when needed (as seen during the dialogue) I also started levelbuilding and I'm making some buildings to go in the background! (they look kinda bad rn so they aren't visible)

Added the background, it uses a shader now instead of a boring static sprite. I also made it so the user couldn't go past the beginning, and I setup a basic dialogue trigger system (using Dialogic)

Added particles for knockback! I'm also working on adding the first NPC, Nym!

Knockback and some hit animation! Working on getting hit particles to look good rn

Two words: health system!

Started working on the actual intro map! Did some work with collision masks and stuff and also added a hit animation for the wisp enemy.

First official enemy, the wisp!

Added smoothening by completely changing the system to use force application instead of just moving. I'm probably overcomplicating it but if it works it works!

Currently working on getting proper enemies to work! There's collisions now and hit detection!

Added a slash animation and slash direction mechanics! It's my first time doing actual pixel art animations and it's turning out decently well tbh

Dashing animation!! Movement looks really good so far!

Figured out proper particles! (and slam animation) I also made a dash but that isn't demonstrated in the video since i don't have a proper animation for that yet.

Smoothing and player animation/sprite!

Basic character controller! Also setup the whole project and I'm working on planning rn