Mana Changes Have Been Made

A number of the changes made in the fortnight just past were fairly minor: tweaks, fixes, and little changes. Correcting the positioning of certain doors, for example; or adding a "dying" state for enemy death-animations; and so on.

One change that's perhaps worth highlighting, if not detailing, is that I've now implemented the use of the game's healing items.

But other changes were rather more salient:

First, and as shown above, I've put in some work on the UI that's presented to the player during the main of gameplay.

In that screenshot, the current weapon is displayed on the bottom-left, with its mana-pool as a bar to the right of that; just above is a series icons displaying the weapons currently equipped. At the top-left is the current utility, and to the right of that is the player's health-bar.

Not shown is a third bar that appears vertically on the right-hand side of the view when a particular utility is activated.

One challenge in this UI-work has been my chosen theming of "brass and crystal". These can produce some quite-bold colours--colours that I fear can, if not handled carefully, clash or become distracting. I hope that I have succeeded in this challenge!

On a partially-related note, in addition to the in-level UI the "encounter" UI has seen some tweaks, making it, I think, a little more comfortable and appealing to look at:


Sticking with the visuals of the game, I've changed my approach to the "inking" of objects.

Previously, inking was handled entirely procedurally: a post-process shader compared depth-values, and inked where it found large changes in depth.

This worked well enough for hard-edged 3D objects, I do think. It worked less well, however, for soft-edged 2D art: there it tended to leave a little gap at the semi-transparent borders (where the object's depth-value was still being written), and further, it tended to poorly follow the lines of the art, I felt.

So I've changed things somewhat: now, procedural inking remains for certain objects, primarily those that are three-dimensional--but is disabled for most. In place of the procedural inking, 2D art then simply includes line-work in its image.

It's a little more work, but I feel that it looks rather better, provides greater control over the inking of the game, and allows for more freedom in my handling of depth-values!

But not all of the salient work of the fortnight just past has been visual--a few matters of gameplay have also seen progress:

For one, you may have noticed above my mention of weapons having mana-pools.

Previously, I was undecided on the matter of limiting the player's use of a given weapon. I could, of course, allow the use of weapons to be limited only by firing-rates and charge-times. However, this means that the main thing balancing high-damage weapons against low-damage ones would be firing rate. And further, it might lead to players relying on a single weapon, when I'd like to encourage them to vary the experience of combat a little more.

I considered a single mana-pool shared by all weapons--but was dissuaded by a timely video-review. (If I recall correctly.)

In the end I settled on each weapon having its own pool of mana--a weapon won't fire (or will be less effective) without sufficient mana. Conversely, mana regenerates over time.

I'm hoping that this will encourage players to switch between weapons more freely--without being burdensome!

The use of such mana-pools does also open up a gameplay opportunity--more on which presently...


Perhaps more excitingly than mana-pools, I've begun implementing the game's "metroidvania abilities"!

The first of these abilities allows the player to generate "mana crystals".

The primary purpose of these crystals is in the powering of certain mana-driven devices: plop one down on a "mana switch", and something happens (such as a door opening).

These crystals are, however, quite short-lived, disintegrating after a short delay.


They also present an opportunity: as they provide mana, they can be used to boost the mana that is consumed by the player's weapons. And further, I intend to have certain enemies attempt to take advantage of such a boost, too.

More dramatically, the crystals are incredibly fragile: a single attack, regardless of power, is enough to shatter them. And when shattered in this way they release a damaging burst of energy--perhaps both a hazard and an opportunity for players...


And the second "metroidvania ability" thus far implemented is line-of-sight teleportation.

This ability is more straightforward than the crystal one: within a given range, and within line-of-sight, the player can jump to a new location.

While perhaps useful at times in combat, this ability is primarily intended as a traversal-tool: it allows passage across hazards or through narrow gaps that might otherwise stop the player.

(I don't have any appropriate traversal areas yet, so the following demonstration just takes place in some open rooms.)


And finally, the design-doc has seen further changes and additions, including at least one new intended weapon/artefact!

That, then, is all for this post--stay well, and thank you for reading! ^_^