Project Vault Dev Log 16

And just before the month is over, a new dev update for Project Vault! Been working on fleshing out a lot of the remaining stealth mechanics for the game this month. This includes the Resonance Pulse for finding nearby enemies or objects of interest, the minimap system, and a revamped wallpress mechanic! Likewise a bit of exploration sketching was done for the ruins under Bod's home city! Finally some sketch doodles were done for items Bod can pickup in the game!

Resonance Pulse Mechanic: One of the big mechanics that needed to get added to the game was the Resonance Pulse ability. This works as a sort of sneak peak system that will highlight enemies, interactable, and salvage across the level. Although it only lasts for a few seconds, it can help Bod get an idea of how best to move. In addition to this I made some updates to the magfield indicator under Bod so that it can warp around objects in the map when Bod gets close to them!

Minimap System: Likewise I finally got the minimap system working for the game. At the moment it's just a barebones top down view that can give the player a look at whats around Bod. Future plans are to give it a more stylized look once I get some further tweaks figured out! One of the big things I wanted to do with this is put a bit of a limit on it though, especially since it can be an extremely powerful tool for a stealth focused game. So for the moment I have it tied in with the energy system so that it has some risk/reward to it's usage!

Wall Press and the Dynamic Camera: Next up is the wall press revisit! When I had left it last there was some pretty sizable problems that caused it to not mesh well with the camera system. I went through a lot of control tweaks to help it control much better than it did before! In addition I got a dynamic camera zoom in working for it when you approach corners in the game. I'm sure there is going to be plenty of tweaks with the camera down the road so that it works a bit better overall, but for now it's doing a pretty good job of adapting dynamically to the objects around it!

Wierway Depths Exploration: One of the major things I've been working on is creating a holistic design look for some of the major locations in the game. For this month my main focus had been on the ruins under Bod's city. These have a bit of a mix of controlled/utilized zones versus the dangerous/unexplored regions. Playing around with how both of these mix of feel has really helped me figure out how I want them to look down the road!

Gadget Boxes: With a lot of the testing levels I'm going to need to have some sort of way to provide pickups or gadgets on any of the given levels. Since the main game mode will have Bod building most of his gadgets, these testing levels would require actual items since there won't be resources to build them normally. I've gotten a bit of a system designed to help with this so far but needed a few ideas on how they looked! Planning on building some of these in blender next month on a bit of my down time!

Overall I was pretty happy to finally get these major mechanics worked out! Now... on to a big month in September! I'm finally going to be tackling the Reactive Ruins system that will vastly influence how the game plays when Bod gets seen! This is definitely going to be a fun month of exploration as I see what sort of things I can put together haha!