Devlog No.027

As I had previously said, I'd lost power for several days due to the hurricane. Fortunately quite a lot of work was done before then and I've also managed to get a source of power and cobble together everything I'd worked on beforehand.

So to start with, I'll talk about the thing I'm sure most are interested in and that's Aria's new form. Her 'blimp' form as I'm calling it. This functions as a detrimental form as previously discussed where you can only affect your horizontal movement and will helplessly float upward. Currently it lasts less time than the wingmilk form, but I'm willing to adjust the duration if it's too short, too long, doesn't float upward slow enough, etc. Obviously things need testing.

How does one go about getting blimped? Well now I've also introduced exploding barrels.

As can be seen, currently there's just two of these large types in the game. The orange one does as you'd expect. Explode. The green one... well it explodes too, but it expels a gas that will inflate you and any nearby enemies as though they got hit by the wind inflation spell.

Of course this only has the same effect as the wingmilk, but if you're already afflicted by the wingmilk affect, then at that point you'll blow up like a blimp. So it takes two of these barrels to turn you into a blimp. (Or a wingmilk and a barrel)

Once that happens, you'll helplessly float upward. If you take any damage at all, you'll POP like a magic filled balloon. Fortunately bursting is little more than an inconvenience to Aria and she'll be ok immediately after so long as she has energy left. (Technically whenever she teleports she bursts into raw energy too as you can see from her safe fall recovery) You'll take extra damage when popping based on a percentage of your max hp as well.

Of course, stationary barrels are great and all, but surely they could be more interesting right? I agree! So there are also these smaller barrels that you can bounce around...

The explosive juggle barrels aren't in yet, but they'll function similar to the green barrels, just falling much faster. The green barrels however are full of magical wind gas so they float slowly down making them easy enough to juggle by hitting them. So long as they remain in the air, they can be hit to keep them aloft. As soon as they touch you, an enemy, or something solid, they'll burst into gas just like the big barrels. And with the same effect too.

I'll upload a little video showing off the new barrels and the functionality as well as Aria blimping and bursting. I also couldn't help myself and made the volume of the pop quite a bit loud to make you jump! If it's really annoying though I can tune it down of course.

In other news, I also went back over the 'unstuck' script. Or rather, I made a new one and left the old one how it is for everything that uses it. The new script is meant specifically for Aria.

This unstuck script is, as it says, to unstuck you if you get... well... stuck.

Previously if you got stuck, you'd either teleport out of the stuck location, or you'd just be stuck until you perished. Well I've modified it now in light of the blimp form. Because blimping can happen pretty sporadically, I'm worried players might get stuck a lot. I changed it up to check more locations and more efficiently too so it runs a little less.

However, I couldn't increase the 'actual range' that it checks to unstuck you. So if you would get stuck before, then you'll still get stuck now.

BUT, I have modified it to help a bit. Sort of...

Now if you get stuck while inflating/expanding/transforming the game will wait until you're done transforming, then it will force you to transform back. In the case of the blimp form however, that means you will pop and it will hurt you pretty bad. Of course it will be strongly up to me to design levels where that happening will feel like the players fault instead of just randomly you perished because you happened to be in a small location and hit a barrel. or something. Feedback on this is very welcome.

Also if you get stuck as just regular Aria, then the game will instakill you if it can't unstuck you. I did this because it's better to do than have the player wait around unable to do anything and be frustrated. Really though I don't know of any situations that this would actually happen. The biggest thing to worry about is transforming in a small space and, as I said before, so long as I design the levels well enough, it shouldn't be a real problem.

In the video I show the new unstuck system too. You'll also see how it's slightly improved so it's just a bit less jarring to get unstuck by the system. Still might need some work, but I can't increase the range since that has resulted in teleporting outside the map if you get stuck in the wrong spot for example.

But the new system overall should be more efficient and only a touch heavier on the processing.

Another small thing to add here is that I got lucky to spot it and there's currently an Ovani SFX bundle on humblebundle which I grabbed. As I have previously said I'm always in need of more sounds so I just got a bunch more of them. And they've already helped as I have a layered sound in there of the barrel being destroyed. It's hard to single out among the explosion/gas SFX, but it's a deep bassy metal sound.

Ah but as far as the barrel inflation... what could really be the point? (Aside from the obvious turning Aria into a blimp) Well, I want to still keep some things under my hat until I can actually release the update, but I suppose it should be ok to show at least a little teaser of what I am working on. I had hoped to actually have an idle animation for this lady, but nature saw fit to foil those plans of mine.

And no, this is not the NPC for last month, this will be an enemy in Candimus. The next thing I will be working on though is the NPC for the month which is, coincidentally, also a thay'valay. I still think I will go with the idea that she's a gobbo to start and will transform back into her thay'valay form as the tf. (I might just do them and then roll right into the gobbo NPC that just won too)

And that's it! I'll upload the vid shortly.