Previous: Progress Update #10 - Terrain Shaping and Visuals
Visuals
Water Foam
The first change is an attempt at recreating the “foam” that happens when water that is travelling is interrupted:
Liquid Highlights
All liquids now have highlighting on their top sides, which helps make them look less flat:
Terrain Smoothing
Last time I talked about adding slopes into terrain via carving to make it look less jagged.
This was roughly where it was at before:
However it still has jaggedness about it even though there are technically slopes there now. In order to allow terrain to look less jagged, the terrain generator now does carving over multiple tiles:
This carving is as I said before is something the player can do too! All of the terrain is still just blocks.
Multiplayer
Another important feature is multiplayer. The goal is 8 player co-op at minimum spec. Currently under high load this isn’t achievable so it is still a work in progress.
In order to iron out some of the common issues, this will require testing on different machines. I will need some people who want to hop into co-op with me on my planetora server, and they can also give any feedback on the game itself during play.
Combat
Since the game is based around spell-based combat with a dash from the beginning of the game, it is important that the player has ample decision making before and during combat, so that it remains interesting. This means making enemies predictable enough that you can plan how to attack them whilst having enemies that still manage to pressure the player to adapt during the fight.
The latest round of combat changes to address this work like so:
Attack Glints
Enemies emit a glint when they are about to attack. This allows players to consider using their dash or dodging before an attack. This also is a signal useful for players that want to use counter spells. An enemy can have their attack cancelled if they are attacked during the start of the glint.
Heavy Attacks
Enemies can also do heavy attacks. Heavy attacks are not cancellable and so any damage dealt to an enemy during a heavy attack will not stop them. Heavy attacks will also stun the player.
Enemy Counters
Some enemies hit repeatedly will also do a counter heavy attack, during which they also take less damage. This means when attacking an enemy, you must watch out for this counter attack to make sure you dodge it. This is the type of heavy attack shown in the above video.
Counter Spells
One new type of spell introduced are counter spells. Players may equip a counter spell as part of their spell loadout if they want to turn an enemies attacks against them. These counter spells have various effects but one example is below (no vfx yet):
This stuns the enemy, allowing follow up attacks without worrying about any attacks or heavy counters, or the player may also decide to run.