Mini Devlog - #9

 Well, last week was a busy week! Let’s get started

Accomplishments this week:

• I ended up having to rewrite a lot of the input code. This was mostly due to how I was handling presses vs holds (which I may or may not even use too much).
  
  I needed to decide how to handle determine what's a button hold vs a button press, while also making sure that the check for holds didn't cause there to be any delay (for example, 0.1-0.2 seconds actually felt noticeable).
  
  Ultimately for the meantime, I decided that a press will execute and a hold will follow afterwards, this basically means a hold will act somewhat like a follow up attack.
  
• I also had to review my input queuing system.
  
  The purpose of this system is to collect inputs and store them into a list, then giving the “inputs” an evaluation/expiration time. This will allow for reviewing inputs over a short period of time, and subsequently make the controls feel a little more “responsive” when pressed in succession as inputs will "register" as soon as a character is in a state that can use them (assuming that input doesn't expire first). I’m currently using this for combat inputs.
  
  I might be doing a wack job explaining it, but here's a video I stumbled upon a while back that inspired the idea of implementing Input Buffering: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmTkH80uojE
  
• I also finished the Team site I mentioned in my last update. The team seems to like it, and it allowed me a chance to review a lot of materials that were  written up but haven’t looked over in a while.
  
  
  
• As some of you might have saw, I posted a recruit post on the blog/twitter last week. We received a little over 50 portfolio submissions! As of this update, we’ve reviewed all of them, and have started reaching out to some of the finalists!
  
• This was definitely an insightful opportunity in many different ways (and in some ways, a tad bit stressful!)
  
• We also begun discussion on the game’s UI, which also brought up some game design concerns that we will be looking to address, such as Breeze’s stats.

Some Additional Coding Items and Bug Fixes

• I fixed a bug where Breeze wasn’t positioned on the wall correctly when wall sliding
  
• I also fixed another bug where Breeze’s wall sliding force wasn’t correct, and also noticed that he was actually going in and out of wall sliding (which was causing a ton of state transitions!)
  
• Reimplemented game pausing! I went through all the character states and other systems to lock down what shouldn’t be operating if the game’s state was either paused or in cutscene.
  
• I also implemented a nice shader to blur stuff that’s behind certain UI elements.

• I added in a “Tweening” plugin that allows me to animate UI and other elements in fancy ways. I also found a cool source that demonstrates some of these different types of tweens: https://easings.net/
  
• I’ve updated the game’s UI manager to make it easier to access UI elements and their events (like hiding the health bar, or displaying the pause screen) in a much easier way.

Next Focus:

• Select the VisDev/Background artist (or artists)
• Continued work on a new testable build
• Begin implementing some particle effects
• Add in a couple more character states that are needed (mostly transition states)
• Updating the main Website and blog! I noted in the last update that already done some updates to the Patreon page, and also added a new Sodo tier!
• Continued work on UI design/planning. Notably, the health bar and some other in-game UI elements.
• I still haven’t found a company to work with for shirt printing and enamel pin creation. If anyone has some recommendations, feel free to share!