Kandria
Combat Tweaks
Another week of lots of little things!
Combat improvements
I've had some more time this week to work on combat. You can now juggle enemies a little bit:
It's still a ways from being great, but I think all the systems in the engine that are needed to make it good are in place. It's now "just" down to the very tedious and time consuming process of going through all the frame data, adjusting it slightly, testing again, and repeating that until it's just right.
Tutorial complete
The tutorial is now complete, including a brief wake-up cutscene!
The sequence at the start teaches you the basic movement controls, and combat is introduced later during the first mission. Separating things out a little like that prevents the tutorial from getting too long and boring.
Lots of tweaks
As part of the continued playtesting there's been a lot of tweaks and additions. Small stuff like letting you dash into tight gaps, having the leaks during the quest actually visibly show up and get fixed, showing a small text to introduce the area when entering it, a new look for the dialogue boxes that feels a bit sleeker, enemies now drop random items, and so forth.
I also took some time yesterday to futz around with text effects, so now we can do fun stuff like this:
That should help animate (hue hue) the dialogue a bit more.
Animations
All this while Fred has been working on animations for characters that aren't actually in the game yet. He's done a huge bulk of work that so far I haven't had time to integrate at all. I unfortunately won't get the time for a while to come either, as I'll be stuck with combat for a while longer, and then with lots and lots of UI. Hopefully I should get to that in September though!
Sounds
Similarly, Cai has been trucking ahead making custom sounds for Kandria. He's done with a bunch already, and I'll try to find time between GDC next week to actually add them into the game. A lot of things are currently missing sounds, so adding that in will definitely improve the feel of the game a lot more.
GDC
So yes, GDC is happening next week. There's a few talks I'll be trying to attend, but mostly I'll be tending to our virtual booth and seeing if I can reach some journalists or influencers during that time. I honestly have no idea what to expect, and being more on the pessimistic side myself I can't help but fear that nobody will show up all week.
Part of those fears is that I honestly don't even know how these booths are discoverable at all? The only way I know to find them is really roundabout: go to swapcard, click on GDC, click on "Sponsors & Exhibitors", click on "Swiss Pavilion", scroll down and click on the tiny "See all" link under the Exhibitors list, then click on "Nicolas Hafner" at the bottom of that list.
I don't know about you, but that sounds virtually impossible for anyone to reach organically.
Anyway, whatever happens I'll be sure to let you know in the next weekly. If you're at GDC yourself, hit me up for a chat at the booth!