Devlog No.054

I've completed the remaining work on the wind blade rework. I think, maybe, the only thing that feels unfinished about it would be the parry SFX. It has one, but ehn, I feel like it could be better so I'll likely find abetter sound to use, but that's really it.

In the last devlog I talked about what would be done with it and now I've gone ahead and finished it all up. I added a new 'parry' to it, but it really only applies to larger enemy types. In this case, that's just the golem enemies and the gargoyle. The jelly valay doesn't really have anything parryable and none of the filimuri really have anything to parry. (And piken you can break their pikes so no need to parry them). There will be a new large enemy type you can parry in the coming update though. As well, at least one part of the boss will have a move that can be parried, but otherwise it's just a very niche feature. But it is there specifically to make the wind blade weapon feel more viable against those bigger enemies.

I've put together a little video to showcase how it can be used and also just showing the weapon in action too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEzceGFHEDQ

As you can see in the video, there is a little 'spark' that appears on the first swing of the blade. That's the parry window. It only shows up on the first swing in the combo, so if you are trying to parry, you will have to use only the first swing. I did make sure that a successful parry created a good opening though! For the golem, you can only parry the wind up overhead punch attack. For the gargoyle, you can parry her charge and her melee attacks. However, you have to parry 'both' her melee attacks in a row if you want to stun her. Otherwise you just deter the attack. (Also, you cannot parry boobs in any way shape or form)

Also, this new parry will not come standard. You'll need to find the 'parry' technique. Fortunately it's located right on the main road of the Ninestep Mountains right before the second golem enemy.

As well, I've removed the ability to destroy projectiles and put it on the wind cutter technique unlockable which is impossible to miss in Bristle Field.

But if you are already at Kirzimi Inn, then fear not. I have also put both techniques downstairs on top of books. They're easy to spot!

Wind Cutter Technique

Parry Sense Technique

Now if they are right at the start of the game and impossible to miss, why would I take them away and give them back as unlockables? Well, very simply put, I wanted the details to feel more important. Right now I don't even have a tutorial for the weapons and I feel like if I dump a ton of information on the player that they'll gloss over it. Instead I put them on the collectables so now they will feel more important and the details are less likely to be lost.

Yes this is a form of yellow paint, but there are two reasons yellow paint exist. One of those is because it lets developers get away with bad level design and the second reason is for those who pay a lot less attention to the details of a game. Which of these is the case for this decision? I don't know honestly.

In other news, I've started work on the frost bow weapon, but haven't really gotten far yet. I'm still mixed on the ideas I have for it and also the design itself. I am thinking that I would like the arrows to follow you similar to how grahsts do and have the arrows have a gentle glow and also a small particle effect of fog to make it look chilled. The arrows themselves feel like they should just be 1 pixel wide lines though and I'm still debating on whether I should have that or actual arrows. But they're not really holding me up. What's actually holding me up is deciding on the actual animation. I have been thinking that I should make it a dynamic weapon where if you are standing on the ground, there is a brief charge up and then you can fire arrows very rapidly until you want to move again and the arrows just don't stun. So you fire them rapidly and once they hit the 'explosion' threshold, they explode doing a buncha damage and stunning in a small AOE. Then while you're in the air, you can freely fire the arrows, but only a certain amount before you need to land. And I'd like to keep the 'slowfall' effect of previous attacks.

But in order to have that mobility, you'd have to have a weak attack I feel and that would make it feel less effective, stiff, or clunky to use. But I have settled though and instead of going for a 'charge up' like the charge cards, I'm going to make it an auto charge. Instead of holding the button down, you gradually recover arrows. When next you fire the bow, it launches all of your current arrows in a spread that attempt to lock onto enemies. If you spam it, you can still keep attacking, but extra attacks will be less effective. You'll still cause a combined explosion on the enemy once they have enough arrows in them though! I think this will be the best choice and I'll be working toward that. It should allow for you to be mobile and not have to have the hassle of holding down the button all the time.

Aside from that, I've made some smaller changes to things. The golem enemy used to have an oval hitbox and I decided to just make it a normal one due to some issues with the golem getting stuck when parried over edges. As well the golem should now not go over any ledges. (Well shouldn't fall off them) There were some minor changes and additions. Fixes to the environment like light sources being added, correcting some tiles that were on the wrong layer, etc.

I also spent a couple of days getting the ability to compile a linux version of the game. Using a raspberry pi 4 I got for xmas a couple years back, I installed Ubuntu on it and figured out how to properly connect to it. There was some tshooting to do, but it didn't take too long to do. Thankfully Game Maker supports compiling to a few different platforms with some configuration. So next update I'll also compile a linux version for anyone who would like that! (Though there are a couple small issues with it. I think a few of the outline shaders don't work on it and possibly other issues I didn't spot while testing it. I'll have to look into fixing any issues I find, but it's hard to est on the raspberry pi system as it doesn't have enough power to easily run the game. If I can get my hands on another laptop, or if I finally get to messing with some spare computer parts I have, I'll try and install Ubuntu on another system and test it properly.)

I've also finished Queenie's TF completely and I'll be posting her shortly! And I have some fan art to share as well as some more art of my own too!

Not much else to really say though.

Oh I had forgot to mention swapping over to a newer IDE in game maker and converting the project. No issues doing so, but I'm not so sure about the performance of the new Game Maker especially in the room editor. Just a bit of a strange change with how I went from using Game Maker Studio 2 the app to just 'Game Maker' which is a newer version and uses a different app id on steam. It's just odd, but otherwise things are fine and dandy!