Summary:
In which prototype attacks gain prototype effects; likewise-prototype effects are added for enemy -death and -damage; and the prototype representations of (non-boss) enemies are, I think, completed.
Greetings and salutations!
This week's screenshot shows some new prototype elements added to an enemy's attack:
The week just past was perhaps largely an effects-based week, but with some technical matters besides:
With the enemy prototype-representations more or less done--more on that later--I moved on to adding some prototype-effects to various enemy attacks.
In short: Hit-flashes and particle effects and splash effects and all of that cool stuff!
And indeed, I believe that I have pretty much all of these effects done!
One of which--for the mummy-sorcerer's AOE attack--you should see in the main screenshot above. Note also the "connector" that now indicates where the attack comes from, which was also added in the week just past.
With that done, I moved on to death- and damage- effects; this, however, is still a work-in-progress.
Aaand... I will confess that for certain enemies--such as the human bandits--this became a little gory: Without death animations, I was relying on particles and suchlike to convey an enemy's demise. And for humans and the like that largely means blood. Meaning in turn that for now they vanish in a spray of red... ^^;
I reported last week, I believe, that I thought myself near to finishing the prototype representations of my various new (non-boss) enemies. And indeed, in the week just past I believe that I finished them!
This was not without some challenge:
There was, I think, just one left incomplete, a centipede. And it was presenting some technical trouble: the engine-provided system that I was using to depict its long, sinuous body was producing some unexpected results in both vertex-placement and UV-mapping.
For a time I attempted a different approach, building a simple 3D model controlled by a skeletal armature, and then procedurally arranging the bones of that armature.
This... more or less worked, but was alas somewhat jittery.
So I returned to my original approach, and applied myself to investigating and responding to the aforementioned system's unexpected behaviour.
It was tricky, but in the end, I believe that I solved it!
(Note that the texture is intentionally not animated, this being a prototype representation; hence also the greyscale colouring.)
And along the way I made various changes that don't seem worth detailing here: new particle-images, little technical additions and changes, at least one bug-fix, and so on!
That, then, is all for this week--stay well, and thank you for reading! ^_^