Here’s the second part of the dev-update roundup! This one was made in June 2022, and we talk about the problems we’ve been having with the combat, mostly caused by the unique challenge of creating a multi-character RPG on a 2D plane.
Hey everyone!
Just checking in to give you a small update re: the state of development. I was hoping our next post would be a big announcement (hence the delay), but it seems this might have to wait until later in the year. If you remember, we had major concerns about the game's combat - in particular, the way that investigators and enemies would meet in melee - forming a messy clump of sprites.
We've been working on a number of improvements, and although it's still not quite ready, it's already feeling noticeably less frantic.
Readability (aka, tackling the 'scrum'):
[In progress] AI will seek out and move to invisible grid-points around their melee target. This will keep the melee scrum spaced out a little.
Combatants in melee combat now lock together. Breaking this lock grants an 'attack of opportunity' against the fleeing target.
Certain movement and escape abilities (dashes, rolls, etc), will bypass the attack of opportunity, giving players (and some craftier enemies) a chance to re-position and reset safely.
Enemies and friendly AI under the influence of certain status effects (fear, dazzle, confusion, etc), will be more likely to break their melee link and seek another target, becoming vulnerable. This should allow for some interesting synergy between your back-line support and front-line brawlers.
Feedback/visuals:
New critical strike graphics!
To complement this, we've enabled critical hits on ALL investigators and enemies, rather than just those with the critical hit skill.
Characters and monsters with the critical hit skill will unleash far deadlier crits!
Enemies will now stagger when hit, assuming they wouldn't perform any other action in the meantime.
For greater impact we've also added a 'super stagger'. This ocurrs when an enemy takes more than 20% of its current HP in damage and will override any other attack, action and even movement. Note: you can see the super-stagger in the GIF below. Just look out for the crit landing!
Quality of life updates:
[In progress] There's now a toggle for auto-attack target.
We've removed the 'combat boundary'. Instead, players can escape combat by leaving the current map, or running far enough away from an enemy's point of origin. We feel this is simpler and doesn't hinder the player with arbitrary barriers to movement.
When enemies/investigators are stacked up together, the AI will attempt to move slightly in order to create an off-set formation. Stacked sprites will also shift in brightness, making them easier to read.
As you can see from the list, we're almost there in terms of the combat re-work, it's mostly just a matter of making sure it all works correctly. The first item: the AI grid, is still giving us some teething problems. Elsewhere in development, I'm still working on the implementation of the cutscenes, branching dialogue, and NPCs.
I estimate that I've implemented around 70% of the basic skeleton of the game's narrative, and will be pushing for 100% completion this summer. This will free me up to spend the rest of the development time on side-missions, content, and even more story polish. As I often say, thanks for bearing with us. I'll be back with another dev-update shortly.
We've got another one in the pipeline and it's a bit easier to digest, I promise (although it is also crab-related).
Originally posted — 05/20/2022.