Progress Report 4/15/2022

Easter is coming... It's coming for us all... Here's what I got done this week:

• Continued planning out the details of Run From Me
• Prototyped the movement for the "Tank" character
• Mostly prototyped the movement for the "Confused" character
• Researched how to apply textures and shaders in Blender

This week... it kicked my butt harder than a week should be able to kick a butt. I had a Sisyphus metaphor going in my head, but I'll just leave it at this: This week at the cookie store was Christmas levels of bad.

I'm gonna use what little brainpower I have left to remember the giantess side of this week.

First and foremost, I've compiled a list of characters and their quirks that could make an appearance in the game, depending on how prototyping goes:

• Default: Default speed
• Tank: Slow top speed, fast acceleration, moves only in four directions
• Glutton: Slow acceleration, average top speed
• Speedy: Fast but slippery
• Confused: Randomly wanders off
• Barrel: Quick horizontal, slow vertical
• Rocket: Slow horizontal, quick vertical
• Undead: Bursts of speed followed by brief pauses
• Drunk: Stumbles in random directions
• Sloth: Stationary, but teleports to the player regularly
• Enlightened: Very slow and floaty, but floats over obstacles

You've already seen some of these in action from last week, but I wanted a large variety to work with. Additionally, some of these descriptions are rather vague about what exactly the character will be like -- that's a surprise for the future! ;D  If you guys have any other movement ideas for characters, let me know! But opposite movement is out -- that one is certain.

I began prototyping the "Tank" and "Confused" characters this week. Mr. Tank was shockingly difficult to get right -- in fact, I still haven't nailed it down even after three hours of programming. You'd think making a character move in the four cardinal directions would be easy, but my different attempts each held their own drawbacks. The one I settled on works as intended, but the character slows down before changing direction rather than maintaining a constant speed like I wanted. I'm chalking this one up to a stalemate until I determine if he's truly going to stay in the game or not.

As for the "Confused" one, things are going quite well. I just ran out of time and energy to work on it this week. Blame the Tank. I'll include gifs of them in action once I've finished prototyping all of the different characters.

Now for some of the new feature designs I have (thanks to the same fine individual who helped set this whole thing in motion):

Player vs Giantess events: the game stops auto-scrolling to make the player face off with the giantess while completing some objective. For example, a roadblock lies ahead and the characters will automatically attack it while the player controls them to avoid the giantess's feet. I have a variety of ideas besides roadblocks, but I'll leave these to be a surprise, as well. :)  (Plus some of them are pretty complex, and I don't want to hype up these features too much if they may not make it in.)

Giantess moods: the giantess will behave/walk differently depending on her mood. This would keep players on their toes, but it'll still take some designing before I commit to it.

Saving NPCs: my initial thought was to have NPCs disappear with a little "Saved!" message appearing in their place. However, someone else suggested that the NPCs could tag along and follow the heroes. Add in periodic safe spots to drop them off and you've got an added challenge! The question with this one is just how challenging it would end up being; I don't want to make the game too hard, after all. Some testing will be needed to help gauge this.

That's all the design stuff for now! I'm not gonna lie, it feels like feature creep has taken its grip on this project. That's okay, though -- a little bit can make a good project great if we play our cards right. I just have to be careful not to add much more beyond what we already have here, otherwise this project is gonna end up as a 3D mmorpg open-world VR title.

...*Sigh* Yes, that would be totally awesome, but let's focus on small projects for now. :P

Now then, I'm gonna go pass out. It's been a very, very long week for me... In the meantime, I hope you guys have a great Easter! I'll see you guys again next week!