Hello everyone!
This is the first of what will probably be many updates focusing on animation and effects. As I laid out in the last updates dev notes I really want every little action and ability in the game to POP with its own unique visual effect. Our combat and mechanics at this point are very solid and so I plan to devote a lot of time in this last year of development to really juicing everything up. To make everything look and feel as fantastic as possible before release. I believe strongly that visuals and effects are completely intertwined with gameplay in terms of how the game actually 'feels' to play. I think really nailing the visuals here will really elevate our core gameplay and help take it to that next level.
I honestly had a blast working on this update as, until now, I've had almost no experience working with animations, effects, particle systems etc. I was a bit worried at the beginning, half expecting to run head first into a brick wall and get completely stuck but it has actually being going quite smoothly. Don't get me wrong, I've amassed a massive pile of abandoned or WIP animations that I'm still picking at, hoping to get a break through, but generally speaking I'm finding the process of learning to do this stuff relatively painless. It probably helps a lot that its just so inherently COOL to fiddle with particles and lights and glowy bits.
A ton of the actual dev time for this update was spent getting groundwork ready for future effects. I've now got a much more sophisticated particle system that can handle gravity, collision, bouncing off the floors etc. Particles can spawn particles or change their frames in response to various conditions. I also spent a few days early on writing up a little test system where I can loop an animation in engine (for example player shooting a staff at an enemy), and then tune variables in real time to try to get things feeling juuust right. Added simple pause and slow mo frame stepping functions as well. This has been GAME CHANGING, and I'm really glad I took the time to implement this early on.
Most of the work I did during this update is still in various states of completion and hasn't made it into the update itself. The stuff that has made it in is likely to get iterated on at least a few more times before release. I'm basically learning as I go here so I'm expecting the quality to improve over time as well as the rate at which I can produce new effects. But for now, I'm actually very pleased with what's being added with this update.
Before we get to the update notes a quick shout out to both PRT and Random595 who continue to produce excellent (and mind blowing) gameplay videos on Youtube. Check them out:
https://www.youtube.com/@prt3766
[dynamiclink href="https://www.youtube.com/@Random595"]
General Action Animations:
Basic Projectiles (Physical, Magic, Fire, Ice, Shock, Toxic): I spent a TON of time on these as they are the most common effects we see on screen. I will probably be returning to these multiple times trying to get them juuuust right. I've tried to make each one unique and flavorful without cluttering the screen with unnecessary noise and visual spam.
Death Light Flash: A small local light flash when enemies are killed. The enemy death effect is also a place I plan to spend many iteration cycles. Its the most common and low level place where we can insert some visual juice/reward/feedback. Killing things is basically the name of the game, and killing things should feel good! That's a statement that totally won't get taken out of context lol.
Dead Poof Particles: added gravity, bounce, collision to the little particles that poof out when enemies are killed. Makes them feel more 'solid' and part of the world. This was a ton of fun to code (never wrote a particle system before), and will be useful for all future animations/effects.
Hit Sprite Flash: super common effect of flashing the sprite white for a frame or two when taking damage. Really helps in terms of providing some feedback that something is being hit.
Sprint Ghost Trail: 'after images' trail characters as they sprint, charge, lunge or are knocked back. A simple motion blur effect. Sprinting is another place that I plan to devote a bunch of additional time since its become such a core part of the game.
Slow Projectiles Bobbing: think orbs of fire, arcane arrows etc. such a simple little change but I really like the look of it. This is like 50% a UI thing in the sense that its visually cluing the player into the fact that these 'objects' are going to be moving each turn.
Ability Facing: when aiming an ability the player sprite will face the cursor. Something simple to make even the moment of aiming an ability feel more 'lively'. I spent a TON of time trying to get Idle animations for casting looking good (when you have selected and are aiming an ability) but none of it looks good enough yet to make it into this update.
Ability Animations:
Power Shot: added a unique animation with different colors depending on the type of projectile you are firing. I did this before the basic projectile work so I plan to go back at some future date and incorporate more of the unique effects from each projectile into their Power-Shot variant.
Power-Strike: some tuning and polishing to to the lighting and animation.
Freeze: added unique animation
Cone-of-Cold: added a unique animation (finally lol)
Lightning-Strike (NPC): added a very brief bolt striking the ground animation before the shock tiles spread out.
Trample (NPC): added a unique animation whenever enemies trample.
Raise-Water-Dead (Rethlit the Rotten): added the existing summon animation (for some reason it didn't have it). This would be a fun place to add something unique in the future (zombies raising out of water).
Cloud-Wall (NPC): more tuning to the timing to make the spreading motion more obvious.
Environment Animations:
Arcane-Pillars: added an ambient glow to their glyphs.
Exit-Portal: added the same glow and pulse that normal portals have.
Pit-Trap: added an animation w/ a slight pause so its obvious what has happened. Previously the game would just sort of large for a second while the next level generated and it was often pretty jarring.
Glyph-Door: added a flash and fade animation. I plan to work on this one more as I think opening these things is a good place to devote some JAZZ as its triggering a big climactic fight.
Speed-Floors: added a pulsing glow + a small effect when player/npc steps on and triggers it.
Tome-of-Knowledge: added an animation for when the player learns a talent and the book fades away.
Rethlits Casting Sprites:
Rethlit sent me a bunch of really nice alternate sprites for NPCs when they are casting a delayed spell (think smite, fire storm etc). This is def one of those places where I think that graphics, mechanics and UI all sort of overlap. Not only do they look good but they help clue the player into the fact that the NPC is 'doing something'. Once I get some idle casting effects working for the player I'll likely add them to these NPCs as well just to really draw attention to them.
Large Boss Sprites:
We've had the ability to do larger sprites for awhile now, so I spent some time enlarging some of our existing bosses. Pretty simple but it helps sell the importance of the bosses and make them more immediately visually distinguishable from their minions.
Front Giant King
Efreeti Lord
Storm Lord
The Lich King
The Soul Warden
Rethlit the Rotten
Thurg the Earth Shaman
User Interface:
Lunging enemies will now show a directional arrow as well as highlighting the path of their lunge.
Smoothed the cursor when the player is moving. This is the green tile highlight box appearing under the players mouse. Previously it would sort of jitter as the player moved across tiles. This is one of those little things that now looks so much better I can't imagine how bad it used to look.
Added a simple 'click' frame to the movement and attack cursors (green and red) when the player clicks. A little bit of visual feedback.
NPC descrition will show 'turns remaining' for: Arrow-Storm, Elemental-Overload, Sniper-Mode, Burrow, Shields-Up.
A Slow Projectile that will hit the player in the next turn will now highlight its threat tiles automatically (even if the mouse is not over them).
A Slow Charging enemy that will hit the player in the next turn will now highlight its threat tiles automatically (even if the mouse is not over them).
A Bomb, Ice-Bomb, Bone-Bomb, Tornado that will hit the player in the next turn will now highlight its threat tiles automatically (even if the mouse is not over them).
Fixed or added descriptions to: Portals, Exit-Portals, Blink-Shrooms, Tornados, Speed-Floors.
Gameplay Stuff:
Changed Slow-Projectiles back to only moving two tiles per turn. I feel like they should remain in play for longer and 3 tiles was just a bit too fast.
Drachnid-Priestess: Acid-Proj => Smite
Bloat (Speed): MED => SLOW and HP: MLOW => MHIGH. Felt like making these guys a bit more unique as big 'bloated' ranged tanks.
Bugs and Crashes:
Fixed Danger-School crashing. If I keep having problems with this I'm going to have to just rewrite the whole system at some point since I have completely forgotten how the weird file loading is supposed to work.
Fixed NaN exp in custom games.
Fixed an incorrection animation for wall pistons in Vault of Yendor
Tall Monsters (like bosses) will now have their heads darkened along with their bodies when not visible.
