Hello Goblin Gang! Happy February. There's been pretty steady interest in WOFG! through January, and demo playtimes keep going up. This is very encouraging for us. Thanks to everyone who is playing our little goblin game.
I know it's been a while since our last update, and unfortunately this one is also very small.
In this Update:
- Small settings tweaks and changes.
- New gravity handling which should fix the "floating" bug when Goblins walk over small ledges.
That's it. Sorry if you were hoping for more.
That's the bad news but I've got good news too! WOFG! has a bright future. We've been making slow but steady progress rebuilding the goblin controller from the ground up. What's in the demo now is fun- but it's also not quite right. This rebuild will give us a chance to revisit some mechanics we didn't quite get right and improve a lot of the code that's affecting the game's performance.
What are the goals of the Goblin rebuild?
- Better Sprinting- we want the Gobs to be able to hit ramps and get big air, and drift around corners. It's no secret WOFG! is heavily inspired by the ragdoll physics in sports games like Pro Skater and Descenders. If the Goblins go faster then they crash harder, that's just good fun.
- More Animations - More animations make our ragdoll better. We want to add animations for sliding, changing directions, punch combos, long-jumps, and more.
- Better Jumping - Standard jumping in the demo is alright, but wall jumps, sprint jumps, and hanging jumps are janky. True Goblin parkour needs good jumps.
- Ability to Climb - Your Gob should be able to grab stuff and pull themselves up. It's something we've wanted for a while- and you actually can do it in the demo right now. It's just not easy or intuitive. If you could easily climb stuff with the existing grab mechanics it would open up all kinds of interesting platforming.
- Items- We've always wanted to have items that change the way the Goblin's attacks work. We've prototyped this before but we cut it from the demo because it wasn't quite ready. This reworks gives us a chance to build a flexible item system so we can easily add new items as we continue development.
- Better Goblin Buddies - At the same time as rebuilding the player's Goblins we are rebuilding the NPC Goblins too. We are aiming for better pathfinding and decision making. Again we want to build in a way that will let us easily add new behaviors.
- Performance - We want WOFG! to run better on more hardware. We've already been able to streamline a lot of the code that's running the demo and test builds have been encouraging.
So that's what we are working on. We want to take the time to get this right- and it's going to take as long as it takes. If we can build a solid base now we will be able to make a better game long-term. Stay tuned, and let it cook. These Goblins are going to be great!
Finally, Steam's Couch is happening right now! I'm not sure how big a deal it is, but WOFG! is registered to participate. Maybe this is a good time to grab a pal and take another hike up The Skrimble Thimble?
As always, until next time, Watch Out for Goblins!