Devlog 21/9/26 - Remake?
Time for a progress update.
First up
I've decided the public release should wait a little. The whole point of a month between Public and Supporter releases is to give supporters time with the game first. Partially it helps to work out some of the bugs as well. Unfortunately this time it's got some pretty annoying ones with the combat system. As a result, I've gone back and pretty much rebuilt the combat from scratch, as well as implementing some of the suggested changes. To be honest, with the testing and fixing, I'm actually starting to enjoy the combats where before they were just a thing to get through.
Combat Changes
The biggest one is how lunges work. Before, we had a jump and run/leap to the attack, takedown or action being carried out which had issues with terrain collision. I talked it through on Discord, and the consensus seemed to be a better method, though less realistic, and was a form of teleport. I'll say that I've rebuilt the lunge so we do still have the old version but for now it's all toggled to Teleport.
It also had some neat effects added.
Another complaint was that you could block enemy attacks normally, but special moves were auto-hits, so I've added a block window between when the enemy teleports back in and attacks you. This window depends on game difficulty and seems to be achievable on Regular difficulty about 50% of the time. I might need to tweak the values slightly.
And another feature has been knockback. When you hit and enemy they should get knocked back. This took a little tweaking, but I got it in the end...
The combat feels a lot more alive and interesting now, and switching between Fight and Fuck modes is nice and quick. I've added in otehr stuff as well:
Enemy UI Icons to show their current moveset
Range Markers
Scaling attack damage on combos
Hit changes
Although relatively small things, these are pretty important. The UI Icons show if their last move was Fight or Fuck, so you know where their current feelings are towards you. This should get expanded as the game gets built out, but for now it's more of an indicator. If they're too Fighty then trying to Tease them might bring them in to their Fuck moveset and vice versa.
Enemies now have a pair of range markers on the map to show the range of their combat triggers. Orange means they can detect you and red means they can start combat.
And finally, attack damage increases the higher the combo, so now multi-attack is a useful tool.
Probably the biggest change is how we do Hits. We use an area in front of the character to see who gets hit rather than actual interaction between fist and body, which means if you aim attacks right, you can hit multiple enemies at once. It also means enemies can accidentally hit their friends in a melee.
On top of that, I've fixed things like Clothing Damage resetting when you pick up items, and items not removing from the inventory when used.
What does this all mean?
At the moment, I'm working through it all. Building and testing. It's getting closer, and as of writing this I have 10 outstanding items to fix or change. The last few weeks were busy with coding work, but that project has been suddenly cancelled (meaning 4 months of work including a couple of 36hr crunch times they're refusing to pay for), but now I just have stuff to do around the house, a fix to a leak in my van and game work. So I'm hoping to knock through the game stuff quickly as it's now my sole source of income.
Release Dates?
I'm counting this development as a continuation of the previous phase. The game wasn't in a good enough state when released, so when this update goes out, I'll reset the clock on public release. I'm hoping to get it polished off this week, but we'll see how things go.