Dev Log 4#

There weren't any updates this past week but that's because me and Frece have been busy.

I'll get down to it in footnotes and explain it in detail after that;

1. Story and storyboards
2. Map design
3. New enemies and enemy concepts
4. AI adjustments
5. Bug fixes

 1. Story and storyboards

Over the weekend while I was talking to Frece, and thanks to Frece, I managed to make some cool advancements finer details of the game's story along with making a basic storyboard of the character's origin and the game's ending.

I had talked to Frece about making a short graphic novel detailing the back story and events leading up to the beginning of the game, but if we do end up doing it it'd be strictly at the end of development when literally everything else is finished. Obviously not going to reveal any story here because of spoilers.

2. Map design

After talking with Frece about the story, we moved on to the map since we were also discussing enemy types and how they would be placed and what their role would be, along with what they were from a realistic standby (i.e. if they existed then what kind of creature they would be, etc).

We dipped a bit into the general layout of the game's overall map design and structure, nothing too detailed like room placement and such. Just general area shape and structure. We touched a bit on player progression through the maps and then moved on to the new enemy concepts we came up with.

3. New enemy and enemy concepts

We came up with two new enemy types for the game, both of which are of the flying variety. Still figuring things out but one of them produces toxic gas when the player is near, causing passive damage that does not induce a damage knock back which makes it especially deadly since you can wonder into a cloud thinking you're not getting damaged due to the lack of knock back.

Overall we're both very happy with what we came up with so far and are still working on development.

4. AI Adjustments

This might bore a lot of you, I made a number of  AI behaviour adjustments and other changes to the AI programmed in so far and the base AI scripts that most enemy AI in this game use. They're relatively small changes but the effect of said changes is staggering.

Among the AI adjustments were refinements for the collision detection of the AI-floor and AI-slope detection which check if the AI is standing on solid ground or currently on a slope, respectively. These are all fundamental changes that help speed up the development time in the long run.

5. Bug Fixes

While implementing the AI adjustments and testing them in a "real" in-game environment, some game breaking bugs were found that could be used to exploit the AI, which have been patched and remedied. Examples of the bugs were things like glitching the Wallask (floor worm) AI in a certain way that let you stand on top of it while it attacks but not getting hit.

Not all bugs were AI related, some were to do with the player damage knock back script that knocks the player back upon getting damaged. So far all the bugs found have been dealt with and patched out.

Conclusion

In the end it's been a very eventful week for me and Frece, working on NiTL is definitely a blast and there is something very special about coming up with a monster concept( or any concept), making the art and then programming it to see it come to life.