This is a post I made to the Zinnia Games Blog: https://zinniagames.com/the-friday-tiding-10-rounding-out/

The Friday Tiding #10: Rounding Out

06 Dec, 2024

Double digits!

I'm very happy to see that I've been able to keep up these weekly posts long enough to reach the tenth one. But milestones aren't what I'm here to talk about today.

The Casterrrrrrrrrrrr

This week's work on Project Petunia has been in all areas. I spent some time in the player's code to have it support animations when the player casts a spell. I drew the frames for it a while ago, but I realized with how my game currently handles the player's animations I'd have to completely rewrite it to support the casting animations.

Or at least that's what I thought I'd have to do. Turns out I could just hide the player's main sprite and show an alternate sprite set with the player's casting animations and you'd never know the difference in game. This thankfully didn't require a complete rewrite of the animation code, instead only needing a couple of extra lines that took about 30 minutes to get all settled in.

Grave Grinder

Of course there was more work on the levels of Demo 2. Firewalker is now fully complete, and that leaves only our two Hard tier levels to be worked on. My plan with these two is to just do them one after another. I'll start with Hanged Ten first since it makes up the bulk of the work left in Demo 2, and Acrophobia will come after.

Hanged Ten will be home to at least two new enemies, and a few of its own gimmicks. The idea for the world I am wanting this level to take place in is a massive cursed necropolis in the desert. This world will have a selection of unique enemies that don't appear outside of it, and they'll be taking precedence over the forces under Slader's command that the player fights throughout the rest of the game.

The first of these new foes is this shield carrying nuisance. They'll block any spells or pounces the player throws their way from the front side, destroying those spells in the process. Getting too close to them will prompt them to backhand you with their shield. A theme for the enemies in this world is that I want them to seem smarter than the enemies that are fielded by Slader. So they'll tend to have more unique reactions to the things that the player can do.

The second new enemy is draped in an ominous cloak, and will summon fireballs that attempt to home in on the player's current position. The fireballs move very fast, but their turning speed is low so they have a good chance of shooting past the player. Despite this, their erratic movement and large size means that you'll have to adjust your movement to ensure you don't end up in its path.

Tutorializer

While work on the main levels progresses, the tutorial needs love too. There is only one new thing I had to program for the tutorial, and that is the text that tells you how to play the game. This was light work for me, and I got the system working in about 30ish minutes. I spent some more time making it so the game can recognize which controller the player is using, and adjust the controls given to them accordingly.

A solid week of production, one that brings us closer to the release of Demo 2. I spent a lot of time this week working on the game's soundtrack as well, but that's not very easy to show in a blog format like this. I'll likely spend some time in the next post talking about it. See you next week.