Patreon Weekly #44 - Apr 6th, 2020

Hey Patrons!

I’ve spent this week working on final polish for 0.8.0, including AI changes, spritework, and a blog for ShatteredPixel.com

The AI changes that I discussed in the last weekly were all added in beta-5.3, and so far seem to be working perfectly (after quickly fixing a crash bug in beta-5.4). I was pretty confident there were going to be some compromises, but instead everything seems to be working about as well as possible.

I’m hoping to release the blog and finish up 0.8.0 in the next few days, so if you’d like some updates on that you should check out the devlog and announcement channels on the patreon discord.

Read on if you'd like more details... 

Final Spritework

While they’re not quite ready to show up ingame, I do have some sprite details to share, including a WIP.

For Ripper demons, I started with the current placeholder sprite and tried to adjust it to be more demonic and gory. Despite just being a quick recolor, many players really liked the darker colors and bright orange eyes of the current placeholder, so I decided to carry some of that into the final sprite. The body has been changed to a fleshy red, and the rippers have been given big claws. Currently I think the sprite is heading in the right direction, but the claw shape and some shading details could be better. Below you can see the initial placeholder sprite, the current placeholder, and the current WIP for the final ripper sprite.

For DM-200s, you may remember an image I showed off quite a while ago with triangular treads. After some more experimenting, I’m now moving away from triangular treads and instead considering more flat ones. While the visual variety is great, triangular treads just take up too much vertical space, which means the sprite is either too tall, or looks squished. I may opt to have DM-200s look like a slightly shrunk DM-300 with flat treads, and experiment with giving DM-300 the entirely new sprite, possibly with big triangular treads. There is more space to work with for DM-300, so triangular treads may work there.

What’s Next?

The next update, v0.8.1, will focus on a grab-bag of smaller changes and cleanup for 0.8.0. I don’t yet have 0.8.1’s content totally nailed down, but here’s a quick list of some of the things I’d like to do:

• Improve hero select with a new UI and hero splash art.
• New SFX for movement, and possibly combat.
• Overhaul for the Fog of War. Its code is currently a mess and really needs to be redone.
• New boss-centric challenge that takes advantage of all the new boses.
• Large pass on general game balance.
• Some targeted improvements to various game elements such as items, classes, alchemy, and enemies/bosses.

As a grab bag update, 0.8.1 can be flexible, and we happen to have missed a patron poll in March! So, I’m going to try and get you guys a bit more involved in this update and will have some polls that affect what content I prioritize and end up working on in 0.8.1. We’ll have an extra poll in April or May, depending on how things shake out.