Madlem Update Mar2024

Playable Download:
https://blindvoid.itch.io/madlem/download/9tAKLtKz16ytTco3O0JFt3kyA9LOZ64uoRL6_5m6

Lots to show off this month.

First thing, all the enemies for the Sunder stage are now fully sprited and animated. I ended up scrapping the big jellyfish cause it was too much of a pain but I'm happy with the variety on display here. With this I've been able to iron out a lot of the stage sections and I'm pretty happy with those now too.

I also messed around with some shaders to enhance the vibes of the background, completely unnecessary but happy to have this kinda framework available for cool backgrounds in future.

BOMB VISUALS. The particle system I developed way too early on is finally coming in handy in making these effects way easier to create. Personally I've found that making the bombs visually sweet makes them a lot more appealing to use which is exactly what I want. And the fact they can scale with radius may make bomb focused builds more appealing as well (they don't have a lot of support in the bomb resource regeneration department yet but they can definitely be powerful and are worth a shot).

Other things that I don't have gifs for.

• Huge performance boost with 3d backgrounds.

• Always visible player hitbox and player outline (experimenting with player visibility).

• Slowing auras utilized by Flytrap.

• Made deathbomb time slightly more generous overall.

• Fixing some visual issues with 3d fog.

Thats most of the important stuff. I did manage to work on the music some more which I'll probably post a bit later but it's still in progress, but as of now it's kinda the only thing I gotta finish now before I start showing off the game and get some playtesting going.

The other main things being player sprites and sound effects, the latter just requiring me to I think just sit down with 1 or 2 sound packs and experiment with an interesting identity I want for the sounds in the game. I like the organic splats I have for the enemies and I recently added some metallic slicing effects for the bombs which I like. My current idea for it would be to have an interesting mix of organic and industrial effects with a hint of mystical sounds for stuff like Moonguide's bomb.

We're getting real close to having the first alpha version ready, at which point I'll start showing it off publicly and open private playtesting which all my supporters are of course invited to take part in. It's an exciting time for sure but first I gotta knuckle down and work on music this month, I'm running out of excuses frankly.