Progress update: bubble shield, blessings, collectables

Hey all. A bit busier than I expected the last two weeks but I still managed to get stuff done - let's get into it.

Progress towards

Progress tracker - what work is ahead of the small test build. It might grow or shrink a little depending on circumstances.

Small - 1 day of work

Medium - 2-3 days of work

Large - 4-7 days of work

🟦 NEW / MEDIUM: Create a Blessings system

I've decided to create upgrades that activate during animations - like the rhythm circle and various other related ideas that allow you to change how animations flow to your liking. Since they change how animations progress the idea is that you'll be able to equip a few of these at a time so you have to choose which ones to activate.

What's left here is implementing various Blessing effects - some of which are mostly there already - making items with icons for each of the effects, adding new map areas with collectables used to buy Blessings, and the interface to view and select Blessings to keep active. I'll probably start with a few Blessings for the test build so that it's not too much work, before expanding on it later.

🟦 MEDIUM: Create new Plant Walker animation

I did some work on this and only really have one sub-animation left now. I wanted to do an alt-animation too, but I think I'll deprioritize it so we can get the test build out faster. After the main animation is done, all I have is a tiny bit of shading work left on the normal sprites and this is done.

🟦 LARGE: Create a small trading hub with shop, service, and quest NPCs

I remade another one of the shopkeepers as another trade NPC - this one being the Blessings NPC. I also created some furniture to surround her floor in the trading hub.

Next up is the potion/consumables trading NPC, making a couple of small changes to the nurse NPC, making some more furniture and interior things, and improving the lift - then it should be done.

🟦 SMALL: Finish inventory and potion making systems

I worked on improving the pickup animations here so when you press Use on an item it doesn't just instantly zap into your inventory anymore.

🟦 MEDIUM: Make playfighting moves upgradeable

I've worked on implementing a new currency for this. I've decided that instead of using "money" for this you have special collectibles that are scattered around the world, which encourages exploration, and encourages me to make more interesting level design too.

I improved the shop interface for upgradeables, shops in general now show when items are unavailable or when items are unaffordable. You'll see unlockables as unavailable until you unlock their associated magic move, and for any magic moves that are available in the shop you'll see thoes as unaffordable before you find the above mentioned currency.

⬜ MEDIUM: Create a tutorial to teach movement and playfighting

No progress on this one this time.

⬜ LARGE: Create Purple Man water mini-boss

No progress on this one this time.

⬜ MEDIUM: Create new Purple Tentacle animation

No progress on this one this time.

✅ LARGE: New run animation

✅ SMALL: Finish playfighting player menu

Otherwise

The last magic move has been changed into a shield instead of a bouncy pinball. It's a passive ability that takes quite a big chunk of your energy to activate, but it provides 50% extra HP, plus a bit more if you lose HP while it's deactivating. I've implemented it as a visual effect shader and when you get hit, the point where it's hit bounces, and when it deactivates it flickers before fading. With this, all the magic moves are done for the test build - I'll just be balancing and tweaking it on and off now.

I've replaced the player voice with a new one. The new voice has more variations and longer source material so it's an improvement in those terms. This means I'm working on some changes to the dynamic voice system so that those variations can come up when they need to, but it's not done yet. I also optimized the sound players a bit so that data is pre-generated before the game launches instead of while in-game.

I've been thinking with portals... at least for visual flair - I've implemented a portal where you see the other side in real time, mostly for fun, but I might use it for teleportation and things where you might want to see what's on the other side before going through.

I've been working on the entity spawning system a bit - working towards re-using entities more aggressively so that there are less active entities taking up precious CPU cycles.

That's about it for this one. I'm expecting to be a bit busy next week again, the next progress update should be in two weeks plus a couple of days likely. See you then!