Greetings this late April,
Here's our update on development since our 1st public demo's release back in March:
HIT ANIMATIONS
Jon has setup the attack directions/types to be passed with damage events. Thus:
- When struck, characters now play hit animations, leaning, based on the direction of the attack.
- Jon has added a HUD for attack directions which you can see a preview of above (the floating arrow). Hopefully, this will help new players realize their attack types vary based on their movement direction. This will eventually be optional in settings.
(“You shall not pass!”)
- We’ve also started adding block hit animations for weapons.
HEFTING
Heftables are now setup to damage what they hit by velocity. This allows mages to whack opponents with a crate, while using Telekinesis.
We have also started experimenting with character hefting! Here’s a little preview of it:
NPC TYPES & DIALOG VARIATION
Aside from updating the project (to Unity v5.6), Jon spent time setting up some differing NPC types. In the demo, he had only begun the avatar system and just figured out how he was going to go about setting up variations of NPCs. He did not want to make prefabs for every single variation, as there would be way too much overlap in components, and it would certainly be a pain to change any value on a component that they shared. His solution is the creation of ScriptableObjects that he calls Decorators. The Decorators simply apply or perform a specific set of instructions (e.g. set avatar hair color, give & equip sword, etc.) onto the base instanced NPC prefab via a middle-man script (MonoBehaviour). In other words, the middle-man script spawns the instance and applies the Decorators, setting up the instance.
Each NPC-type, for example an Alchemist, will appear in different clothing than a standard villager. They will also be more likely to give you information related to what they do, such as potions and alchemy for an Alchemist.
Jon has made an Alchemist, Smithy, Merchant, and Guard. They’ll each have a high chance of saying some different things more related to what they are and will have different attributes and equipment as well.
Unfortunately, he has also replaced the chicken merchants with actual merchants. They will be missed… For now. :)
We added some new props with functionality! The braziers can be lit, if you are carrying a torch.
WEAPONS: NEXT TEXTURE ITERATIONS
I have been going back through some of the weapons & polishing up their appearances. The broom, for one, had a noticeable crease at the bottom (the frilly end) which has been smoothed/merged into one mesh & material.
We have setup a new skybox where we can manually tweak colors throughout the day cycle. The default Unity skybox didn’t quite capture some of the colors we were aiming for.
Some results so far. (WIP)
RAGDOLL IMPROVEMENTS![](https://media.indiedb.com/images/articles/1/235/234560/auto/tar_ragdoll.gif)
(This would pop you underground pretty consistently before…)
- Ragdoll recovery transitions are now smoother. There used to be some really awkward transitions when getting up. Sometimes the character would flip upside down along with a noticeable camera pop.
- The 180º flip as you are getting up, has possibly been fixed. It occurs a lot less frequently, if at all, anyway.
- Ragdoll getup interruptions work better. Previously, if you knocked someone down as they were getting up (transitioning from ragdoll-state to normal) they would sometimes get stuck standing, even if they were incapacitated.
- Previously, if you were thrown up a hill, you’d many times be sucked down underground. Turns out it was casting the ray from the original character height, not the ragdoll’s height.
MISC BUG FIXES & IMRPOVEMENTS
- Fixed incorrect scaling of the credits panel. It was only noticeable in certain resolutions.
- Newly generated guest characters can now be female. Gender is selected randomly.
- Generated appearance of a guest character now saves, unlike before.
- Revive effect and enhancement sparkles will follow you, even as you ragdoll. Previously, they would stop following you once you went ragdoll.
- Ragdoll recovery is now delayed if any of the ragdoll limbs’ velocities exceed a certain value.
- Setup necks to detect collision, adding a collider. Previously, there was a slight gap between the head and torso where collisions could pass through…
- Setup ragdoll character joint for the head to connect to the neck now. This causes some funnier head flopping when ragdolling.
- Randomized equipment in containers now have varied condition values. They’re not always in mint condition.
- NPCs play a talk animation when talking now.
- Fixed the desktop scroll wheel from zooming in/out all players’ views. Now it will ignore the views of all players who are using a controller.
- Reflection probes update immediately on start of a new scene & passing the time when sleeping.
- Setup sleeping to heal characters relative to the time passed, including the options of sleeping until morning/night.
- Since updating to Unity (v5.6) seems to have fixed the lefty attack bugs, we’ve setup NPCs to be able to be lefty again!
- NPCs will sheathe their weapon when they’ve lost track of their target, and draw their weapon once locating one.
- Fixed a bug that would result in horses having much lower health than they should have.
- Water Cave start point has been moved out of the water.
- Loading screen now displays target scene name.
- NPCs now vocalize when detecting a pickpocket.
- The last scene you were playing in is now saved. You should no longer begin every play session in the HUB.
That wraps up this post. Until next time.
haha you actually listen tomy recommedation about liting men up! WOO! is this on the demo or not yet?
We were planning on having the ability to lift characters for a while but you gave us the inspiration to jump right to it! This will be available in the next version, so not yet. Hopefully, we'll get this version out quicker than the last one. :)