It's been a while since I've updated anything BH2 related!
Apologies for that, but there is good news to be had from this: Progress!
A lot actually.
Let's get to the bitty gritty shall we?
POUCH
"Wait" you say, "What has 'pouch' got to do with a game where you run and shoot things?". A lot actually, cutscenes in particular.
POUCH (Prownie's Outstandingly Ultimate Cutscene Handler) looks a bit like this.
As you can see it is not the most tidiest of systems at the moment but it's still easier than hard-coding every single line of dialogue and movement etc. This brings me on to what the heck this POUCH thing is.It is a custom-made cutscene making tool that I have built myself.
It originally started as something that just sprouted dialogue, but thanks to my increased skill and confidence in programming, I decided to make it do more than just read dialogue.
It also moves characters, spawns objects, fades the screen in and probably most cinematic things you can imagine.
Combat + AI
There have been plenty of changes to those, especially AI.A few months ago, I sent an early prototype of the game to a play-tester I met on Discord.
He commented on how there was no need to dash in the game, a game-play mechanic which I thought would have added lots of depth to the game. He also mentioned that players would always go for the more easier and boring route to completing the game by kiting the enemies.
I decided to play thorugh the game without ever dashing, and funnily enough.
I was able to beat it.
Easily.
You could be a complete newbie at video games and be able to beat that clear, one shot and boom!
Done! You can now throw away the game into a nearby rubbish bin and forget the fact you ever played it.
(Please don't do that to the final game. I crafted it with my heart and soul! Criticism is welcome though).
He was right, I could just walk back whenever I saw the enemies or heck even stand in one spot and just spam the shooting button until they die.
Because in that prototype the enemies just walk towards you and if close enough they stop to attack.
They don't shoot or lunge or do anything that would need you to dash out of harms way.
They're lacking... quite a lot of what makes good AI.
So one day I decided to create a room exclusively for combat purposes and alter the enemy AI. I first of all decided to give the enemies a lunge attack. And I tried to playtest the game without using the dash.
Within the first few 30 or so seconds I died from the enemies' attacks.
A small light shone in my heart as I first saw an ounce of challenge burst through this very figment of my combined efforts.
Now the dash was becoming something useful.
Not too long after I found out that you could actually use the enemies dash to your advantage.
Let me explain.
When the enemy uses their dash attack, you can actually dash simultaneously right through them, then emerge behind them with a mill-second to spare to blast their brains out with your trusty Peacemaker.
Yeahhhhh...
Actually, I've got a name for this: The trade blow.
Because you essentially trade positions with the enemy and shoot them right away.
It might sound simple or trivial on paper but in practice it is not as easy as you think.
Timing is an essential ingredient to getting this tech right ; if you don't dash as soon as the enemies do, the enemy will be the first one to lunge at you with all their might and power.
And you are going to have a bad time.
I also applied this to the boss of the area (yes, this game has planned multiple bosses, not just one like the first game). He is harder than your average enemy but he is quite a good way to mess around with the combat system, since I don't want to reveal much about him (since I want you to explore it for yourself) I won't talk about him very much.
The last thing I want to mention about the combat is a more minor one. You can cancel dashes by pressing the shoot button. This can be quite useful if you want to keep your fire range close to the enemy rather than dashing to the other side.
I'm still skeptical about this feature since I haven't found too much use for it.
But then again, I think I'll need to play-test the game a lot to see where this feature works the best.
And make any necessary changes to make this feature more useful or ditch it entirely.
Only time will tell.
Animations
I have spent a lot of last month working on the animations, and for a large part, they are complete. They are a huge step-up from the RPGMaker2003 styled 3 frame animations that the 1st game had. The animations feature detailed and clear walk-cycles within each character.
Since my game "Pipe Dreamer" I have come up with a new way of animating sprites, I basically separate the body parts into segments and animate them. Then I put them together to make an animated sprite.
In my opinion this works far better than drawing every frame from scratch because, let's face it:
There will always be that off-chance that you may say "Oh dear! Where's the position of the torso at this point of the animation?" once realizing that you have made a wonky animation.
It has definitely helped me not only make more efficient animations, it helps me make them faster.
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| Isn't life easier when you break it down? |
Level Editor
To make development easier, I've decided to make a level editor for myself.
It loads level layouts from a list and displays it all.
This is quite revolutionary for me since in the first game, all the areas were in one scene.
Part of what it does is generate enemies and collisions based on an arrangements of specifically coloured pixels.
But there is a downside to this, if I want to edit a collision box on an enemy or implement an animator on to them, I would need to click the Generate tiles button to generate them again, I might need to find a workaround but I won't focus on that now.
The feature is sound so far though, nothing game-breaking. Ideally I would prefer to make an editor where you can place enemies, collisions, cut-scenes and all that stuff on the go and save it all to a specific file, but I don't think I have developed enough skill to do that.
Summing up
Progress with Bounty Hunter II has been going pretty well as of lately. I have been spending a lot more time and effort on this game than I did with the first game so hopefully it should be better than the first...
I hope.
I'm planning to get a playable prototype by December so that's something to look forward to.
It's going to be pretty short, and I mean short. But that isn't always a bad thing, since I prefer shorter games as the replay value is higher.
That's all from me!
