I can't believe it, I've now hit 2 years of game dev logs on project Vault. I swear time flies by way too quickly folks ;o;!! This has truly been such a fun little passion project to work on with my free time. I've learned so much since I started it all, and although I know there is plenty of work to be done, it's hard not to feel a level of accomplishment at what's been achieved so far! Speaking of which I should probably get on with the updates accomplished this month!
Water system: So the major mechanic I wanted to work on this month is the water interactions with Bod. Water will constantly be a problem for Bod in the game once he obtains the void suit. It will mess with a lot of the suits features and drain it's energy reserves so long as Bod is in it. But on the flipside it has a lot of advantages in terms of hiding (just so long as you don't make a lot of noise haha). Getting all of this added in with some slowdown updates has gotten me one step closer to accomplishing what I want for the system!!
Bug Cleanup/Playtesting: At the start of the month I had opened up the game to a round of patreon playtests and feedback. Got so many great responses and feedback, so thank you so much everyone for helping with that! Been working on tackling a lot of the major issues I saw on there and build up a list of things I want to work on in the future based off the feedback!
Epoxy Satchel: Another gadget has been added into the game! This time around it's a remote detonated gadget known as the epoxy satchel. This tool can be placed on the floor anywhere in the map before getting triggered remotely to detonate. Using a 2 part epoxy that flash freezes, it will ice up enemies and terrain in the nearby area upon detonation. So far I've gotten the initial interactions down (Planting the mine, detonating, water freeze effect, and initial particle effects). Going to need a lot of cleanup and some extra code for the detonations overall. But it's a great starting point to build off of!
Cast Shadow Updates: So I finally got my cast shadow system working in the game!!! I am so freaking stoked that it's working now. Got a lot of cleanup to make it look clean, but at the moment just seeing it working in the game has been such a massive boost in energy!
Bod's Place Greyboxing: Continued efforts on greyboxing in the game has continued! I finished up the greybox efforts on Bod's place over the course of the month, which means camera work has also been implemented! Really starting to get a hang of how the camera systems should feel and move, so it's kind of cool watching it all come together on level layouts like this :3!!
Now on to next month! I'm going to be revisiting the ledge hang system to build it out to it's full functionality. It's been real jank for too long now and needs a bit of a revamp/cleanup. So I'll be adding camera updates, new animations, corner turns, and drop catches to the system to better reflect how I want it to work in game! Going to be a busy month with it all, so I'm hoping I can put in a lot of effort with it all :3! As a side note I've also finally been starting into learning C++ so I'm hoping with time that can help me start developing code that I had been lacking overall with Unreal. Overall pretty stoked for what's to come :3!!