The Fool's Path | devlog 7

Yet another devlog.

I've just about finished level 8 and started work on level 9. Level 8 is the first of 2 winter maps. I added snow and ice tiles to match the winter theme. The white and blue tiles made the current lighting super washed out. So for level 8 I turned off the directional light completely, I light the map with global illumination using the world environment node. It gives it a cool effect I think. At least it's very different looking than the other levels. Now the game has 4 different tile sets which I think is a lot of variation given the length of the game. 

The beginning of level 8 starts with you meeting a group of NPCs around a campfire. I made the campfire by pasting together existing assets and adding a particle effect for smoke. The NPC tells you to hit a button and they will attack. This gives you time to position your units by the door. Once you hit the button the door opens and the NPCs rush out the door and are immediately attacked by a slime and some skeletons. It's then your job to see if you can prevent them all from dying. I spent a long time getting the animations for the farmer NPC to work . I don't know how to edit animations in blender so I do what I can with code. It's usually pretty easy but sometimes models come with one big long animation instead of individual ones. So I need to play sections of the animation using code which is a hassle. 

The end of level 8 leads into level 9 which I just started. It takes place on a frozen river at night. I made some cracks in the ice and put water tiles beneath them and it looks pretty cool. I use these cracks in the ice to block off certain areas of the map. I thought about having the player be able to break the ice and have enemies fall through, but that's a lot of work for something that could happen like once. Level 9 was supposed to be the last level, but I think I need one more level to wrap things up. I want some kind of special enemy for the snow levels, but I'm still looking. 

I did add another enemy however. A giant spider. I think a game like this almost requires a giant spider of some kind. I found the model with animations for free. I may need to find a spider web texture I could add to the area where the spiders are. Right now there is one spot where I use the spiders but I may put them in earlier levels. The levels are a bit bare when it comes to enemies because I purposefully left room for more enemy types. I'm still waiting on the goblin sapper model. I want to get it in the game pretty soon so I can be playtesting where it will work best. I may need to just use a skeleton model as a placeholder. It would just be a skeleton that blows it self up somehow. 

Most of the time spent this week was on improving the tile highlighting system. When in combat, when you click on a unit, it highlights all the tiles you have enough action points to reach. I do this using a flood fill algorithm. Before the algorithm was not taking into account the fact that I allow diagonal moves now. So I had edit it to do so. It means it's checking 4 more tiles each step so it's more taxing. I need to be careful with this because it can potentially cause the game to stutter. I wish I knew how to run this function in a separate thread. chatGPT doesn't know how, and I can't understand the docs.

 I got different colored highlights working. In combat when moving units the path can be 3 different colors. If the path is green, the unit can move and attack. If it's yellow the unit can move, but not attack, and red is out of bounds. The path can sometimes not match the flood fill highlights, so it's important to show if a path is not walkable. While play testing the game I found myself using the colored path to help play the game. So I think it's a good addition. I wish I could make it like X-COM where the reachable tiles are colored depending on distance in tiles to the unit. It involves changing shader parameters inside a for loop and doesn't want to work. 

I added a controls page to the menu. It's just a big list of all the keyboard controls for the game. Most everything is shown to the player in game, but it's good to have a thing the player can refer to. The escape menu is just semi transparent squares for the UI. I need to add more art for this. I may try to use mid journey again to generate art that would fit into the style. If there is a style to the UI. 

The game is now playable up to level 8. I just played through the whole thing again and I think it's pretty great. If you can look past the occasional bug and the patched together low poly models. The game will slowly get polished more and more until I think it's ready. Then I'll just make it available. I don't know how to promote a game and I can't be bothered to learn. The dream is to get it good enough to put on steam. Once I do that, then I'll worry about promoting it. 

https://jhyde.itch.io/thefoolspath

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