Jeez this month flew bye! Got a decent chunk of progress in on some new game mechanics this month, although not quite as much as I would have liked. Between both Naru and I getting sick, and my day job ramping up a bit, a lot of my spare time for game dev sort of got eaten into this month. Despite that I still made some great progress on a few things! A big focus was on starting some development on one of the new enemies in the game, the Gravity Eye! So lets dive into the updates :D!
Gravity Eye Enemy: oooooh new enemy :O! The gravity eye is going to be another one of the core enemies Bod will find in almost every area in the game. The main reason being that they will serve as stationary camera enemies in the game! I've currently modeled the design so that it's can be modular with all the different environments across the ruins. So far I've gotten the camera setup working so that it can spot Bod and call an alert. Some work has been done to setup it's AI work once it has activated, but this is going to take some significant work down the road to flesh out into my full vision. Either way it's an amazing starting point and gives me some new tools to keep fleshing out my Stealth training Levels :D!
Prone Dive: I've finally gotten the prone dive working :D! Ever since I've seen this in use with MGS5 I've always wondered how it would feel in one of the fixed camera MGS games. Got a bit of time this month to work through a quick animation for it that I've now included in the game! With this, Bod can now do a quick dive that puts him into a prone position. With some careful aiming and timing, it can also be used to drop Bod straight into a crawlspace. Overall I'm really happy with how the mechanic works right now! Next up with it is going to be a bit of a breakout with some of the animations so that the animation can spread out a bit further if Bod dives from a higher location. Likewise I need to potentially get some attack systems in place, and eventually some sound effects for it also!
Hide Box: Next up is a new mechanic for the game I'm sort of calling the "Hidebox" at the moment haha. It's pretty much your standard fair of a closet or hiding place in a game. I've got plans to sort of make a variety of these guys that can be placed either as their own unique terrain pieces, or as modular components in walls or other spots. They will pretty much serve as quick hiding places that Bod can duck into when trying trying to bypass patrols or get away from an active patrol. Still got a lot that needs development for this as I've just barely started getting the interactions working, so expect some more updates on this in the next dev update!
Wierway Depths Greyboxing: Outside of mechanic work, further time has also been spent doing layouts and initial greyboxing for the ruins under Bod's town! This is going to end up being one of the fundamental Dungeons that Bod revisits over the course of the game. I've currently drawn up initial layout ideas for the 2 main zones on it. Likewise I've managed to get the first level blocked out for the most part. I think I'll be revisiting some of them a bit more over time as I work through ways to make the levels a bit more interesting, but for now it's a great start on the actual in game content!
Next Month: With the end of this month, I've finally hit another one of my major milestone stretches! I've got a bit of a unique opportunity to potentially get some public feedback in May at a local indie game convention, so my major goal for April is going to be cleanup. I'll be working through a bunch of my code and semi implemented features to start fleshing out some of the systems that have sat half finished for a bit now. So expect next month to be a bit of a lighter month on content, but for it to finish with a new test build that folks can play around with :3!!