Weekly Update! 10-7-18 (Animations, New Visuals, Level Design and Secrets)

(Higher quality video here: https://gfycat.com/BetterBitterCats)

Hey there everyone! Time for another weekly CPE development update! This week I've got a fair few things to show off, so let's get right into it!

First off is the video above, showing off some cutscene animations Orexius has been working on! Like I mentioned when the last update came out, I want to try and make the cutscenes in CPE feel more lively, which means having more character animation. Many animations will be shared across multiple cutscenes, but some of them will be unique to individual cutscenes as well, it all depends on what's needed. Here you can see Orex has added a few animations to the cutscene where Alicia meets Rodriguez for the first time - namely, he actually holds an item out (accompanied by a little shine effect by yours truly) and she grabs it from him. We have plans for a bunch of little animations like these, though only a handful of them will be present in this update - it's something we'll be adding to gradually as the game gets further in development.

(Higher quality video here: https://gfycat.com/DarlingBigheartedDungbeetle)

Next up is some new visual stuff. I decided to do away with the "slightly different colored blocks" in the Caves - the original intention was to hide secrets with them, but I rarely used them in the first place and even with my best attempts to make it easy to figure out, some players would still get stuck here for a bit without realizing you could break them. So I decided to give them a completely different (and slightly animated) visual style, to make it clear that you can interact with them in some way, and I'll be using them more throughout the Caves because of it. I'm still tweaking the animation a bit, since I think it looks a bit stiff, but I'm really happy with the way the visuals came out overall!

(Higher quality video here: https://gfycat.com/ElasticPlayfulBoar)

Next up is the second boss's beam attack. I kept forgetting about this, so it's just been a plain red visible hitbox for a while now, and I wanted to fix that this update. I still want to tweak the effect a bit and see if I can make it look smoother around his eye rather than having a hard cutoff, but for the most part it's looking much better!

(Higher quality video here: https://gfycat.com/HilariousComplexBear)

Lastly, we have the (almost) complete Auto Shot. As you can see it's actually dealing damage now, and the visuals have quite a bit more polish, though it still needs a few additional effects to cap it off. It looks especially cool with the Tri Shot trigger type, but you can see that for yourself when the update drops ;)

That's all of the visually exciting stuff for this update! Aside from all that, I spent the week working on level design, implementing more sound effects, and beginning to hide secrets around the game world. A lot of the current collectibles that are just hanging out in the open will be getting moved eventually to hide behind those secrets, as well as challenge areas or puzzles - what fun is a Metroidvania without secret hunting, after all? Naturally, I don't plan on disclosing any of the secrets here on Patreon, though you might be able to find me working on them during some streams.

Orexius spent the week working on cutscene animations, like the ones shown above. Once he's finished with the one he's working on now, he'll be working on stagger animations for the enemies who need them (so they aren't just visible hitboxes during those animations), and then working on more H-scenes (both reworks and new ones).

LustFire is working on finishing up the Soldier CG rework, which is probably the most involved one of the bunch. It should be done pretty soon though.

And that's about it! To be honest, I'm not sure we'll be able to deliver the update this month - that stomach bug a while ago set me back a lot more than I had hoped, but I'm still going to gun for a release as quickly as we can, hopefully we'll either barely make it for October or at the very least early November. It shouldn't be a large delay in any case, but I wanted to let you all know ahead of time.

Just a heads up that we might not be able to stream this week - and if we do, they probably won't be at our usual times. Orex's dayjob has some odd hours this week, and since we plan our streams around his off days, it's going to interfere with those. If we do stream, I won't be able to announce them ahead of time like usual, so if you're interested in watching, make sure to keep an eye out! Thank you all so much for your support, and I hope you have a fantastic day!
-A42