And one month down for 2026! Been an interesting month for game dev, as I've been finally working in some damage reaction and game over stuff for Bod X'D!! They don't tell you how hard it is coding in damage for your beloved characters haha. I think I've watched Bod get knocked on his ass like 300+ times now by the end of the month!
Overall I made a ton of progress and learned a bunch! I've pretty much moved through the major work needed for Bod's damage reaction and game over prototyping. It's at least to a level where I can start to see what works, what needs cleanup, and what might need to be revisited.
Now for the major tidbits!
Swarm Shield: One of the major systems in play for the game is the Void Suit's Swarm Shield. This ends up being one of the major defensive systems that Bod gets in the game to help with the ruins. I implemented my initial design for now based on some ideas I've been juggling around in my head. By setting up the shield as a separate entity that can warp and fade whenever triggered, I'm able to move it around accordingly to the spots that Bod gets hit at. Very much excited to clean this guy up and really play around with it some more in the future :D!
Damage Reactions: It's time to hurt bod X'D! Been needing to add in damage reactions for a bit now on Bod, and it was super interesting to get it figured out! At the moment i've coded in and animated 4 way directional damage that matches up with the 4 levels of damage Bod can recieve (Tap, Light, Medium, and Heavy damage). This includes knock downs and even the first failure/fainting animations Bod can undergo when he runs out of life. There are a couple spots that are a bit rough around the edges or need a bit of work, but so far I'm pretty happy with it as a prototype!
AI updates: Gave the Sensor Puppet enemy a cleanup pass on the AI! Wanted to make it so that they more consistently follow Bod when he is spotted. Likewise they needed code to finally attack Bod XD! As a bit of an extra touch, I added in a few animations and damage reactions to them so that they feel a bit more alive. Got a whole heck of a lot more to do with them still, but it's fun to see them shaping up :3!
Living Mine Updates: Spent some time adding in a few more animations and systems to the Living mine enemy. First and foremost was building an actual VFX prototype for the explosion! Learned so much when creating the effect for this, and now I'm obsessed with wanting to make some actual textures myself that I can plug in haha!
Sound Effect updates: Finally playing around with some sound effect stuff in the game! I snagged some placeholder SFX from a few open source sites so that I could begin playing around with some stuff in the game. Very much is rough around the edges, but it does help sell a lot of the vibes even in a rough state!
level Fade and greyboxing: So one of the things I wanted to start working on this year was some actual greybox work of the intended main game. Started blocking out one of the major zones for that this month! So far I've gotten the rough feel of it down and have started working on camera placements for the zones while tweaking the feel. Going to be continuing this next month on the side since it's most likely going to be a whole year long endeavor haha! One of the things needed for this will be some level transitions. So I started playing with a rough level fade system when Bod moves into transition zones.
Now on to next month! It's about time that I started developing more of Bod's gadgets. So I'll be focusing on some prototyping of 2+ of Bod's gadgets, with the main focus being on the Anchor wire and Tube charge gadgets! Bod's finally going to have some gear to fight back against the enemies XD!