Devlog #43: Ayumu's HIT (again)

I’m still in a slump, but doing my best to get out of it. This week I got none of the stuff done that I wanted to last week, but I did do some smaller things that I’ve been putting off.

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Ayumu’s HIT

I’ve been playing Mario+Luigi Dream Team on 3ds and it’s got me in the mood to really polish Ayumu’s timing based hits. I can not find ANYTHING on the internet when it comes to how timed hits should be done in video games, so I have to figure it out on my own and study and copy other games... and iterate a billion times until I get it right.

The latest iteration of his HIT now looks like this- (ignore debug and sprite issues)

Mechanically it’s the same; one guaranteed hit followed by 4 timed additional hits.

I went for smoother movement and some more visual effects, so hopefully it’s an improvement. At the very least, the code is much nicer this time and I can easily tweak values and timing.

As I’m reworking the intro and tutorial this time, I’m going to make sure that the player understands the timing before moving forward, as I’ve seen playtesters struggle with it more than I expected.

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Ambush

Another part of the game I’ve neglected to iterate properly is the ambush ghost hands, so I gave it an animation and a bit tighter reaction window to match. 

(Just now realising it's positioned wrong, I'll fix that)
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Future Plans:

So the rut I’m in continues without an end in sight, so I think my best move is to write off this period of my life as a necessary break and not feel bad about getting nothing done. The GMC game jam is coming up from the 30th-4th and I think I’ll join that and see if I can get some of that new project excitement back, and then my friends invited me to stay with them so I’ve booked a flight leaving the 5^th and returning on the 14^th.

So for the next few days I’ll continue to work on the game, and hopefully a bit on my trip if I bring my computer. But mostly I’ll try working on groundwork stuff to set myself up to start fresh when I get back. e.g. area layouts, concept art, quest ideas, dialogue, etc

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Next Nagayami devlog will be when I get back, but I might do one for my jam game before then.

Thanks for reading!