Hello everyone, since I wanted to post updates about the game more frequently, I'm going to try out weekly or bi-weekly development blogs.
I've worked on a lot over the last week, so I'll break it down into categories and touch on each one briefly.
Enemy Behavior
While there are several new enemy types I want to add in the future, right now I'm working on perfecting the simplest enemy type, the Cyber Freak. This is one of the most common, and weakest enemies. Their strategy is simply to move to your position and melee attack you. This kind of simple behavior is fine for this type of enemy, but I want to introduce a little more complexity in the hopes that fighting them will be more dynamic and fun. To that end, I started working on a behavior for the CF that gives them a chance to attempt to dodge out of the way of the player's crosshairs. It's going to take some fine tuning so make sure it's fun and not annoying though.
I've also been working on the way CF actually inflicts damage on the player, previously it was pretty janky and not exactly clear when the player was being attacked, and what exactly inflicted damage on them. I've worked out how to make sure damage is actually synced with an attack animation, which not only provides a more consistent experience, but actually gives you an opportunity to dodge an enemy's melee attack.
Visuals
I like the overall aesthetic of the game, the color palette, etc. But I've been wanting to push it a little further stylistically. Now that I'm more experienced with 3D modeling and texturing, I think I'll be able to get more visual interest out of the environments, while keeping the same overall color scheme and feel. Previously the game used a solid color skybox, which was the same for most of the levels. I've been working on a few simple color-band skyboxes which I think look a lot more interesting.
I've also been adding computer circuitry themed elements to the environments, which I'm hoping will tie in with the cheesy vintage digital theme of the game.
Right now, the gas station level is the only level being redone, once it is complete, and most of the game features have been brought up to spec, I'll begin remaking some of the older levels and making entirely new ones.
Performance
I've done a lot to improve performance over the last week, such as re-making models and including proper Level-Of-Detail (LOD) models for enemies and other props on each level. For those not familiar with the concept, LOD models are lower detailed models that replace higher detailed ones as you move further away, saving on performance. Better use of the Unity materials system and more efficient use of resources in general has lead to major performance increases all around. The game should no longer struggle when several enemies are on screen at once, which was really annoying before.
Story
I've been writing up a story to give context to your actions in the game, and better inform the design of the world of the game. I don't want to give much away right now, but I want to experiment with unlocking levels sequentially and give a story context to each of them, like a campaign mode. It's also a fun opportunity to introduce some characters into the game and give it some more personality.
More to come
I haven't touched on everything here, I've also been working on a new main menu and improved options menu, improved audio, and a total re-balance of the gameplay, but I'll go more in depth to each of those areas in a later update. While the version of the game I've been working on is not really playable right now, I will probably release it into an experimental beta branch of the game in a few weeks when it is closer to the current version of the game in terms of content. This way people can see first hand what I've been working on and how it's coming together.
Thanks for reading this devblog and for supporting the game. If you haven't already, please share your thoughts, questions, suggestions, etc. on our community discord channel