Eavor update!

This blog post is meant to document the development of my game, Eavor, and also provide insights on the development progress for those interested :)

This week has been SUPER productive for Eavor!

As fall approaches, my schedule is clearing up a lot more, allowing me to put more time into the features I've been wanting to implement all summer.

Enemy Spawns

Anyway, I started the week out by working on an area that's been kinda temporary for a while; enemy spawns.

Previously, enemies would just spawn randomly, but I've now added a system where the "enemy spawner" object will build up a currency over time, and then use this currency to "purchase" enemy spawns at random intervals.

This means that less difficult (cheaper) enemies will be spawned more often near the start of a level, but as the currency rate builds up, there will be a higher chance for more difficult enemies.

I'm still working out how I want bosses to work (bosses should spawn at the end of a stage after completing the stage's objective), but I'll probably add some basic elemental modifiers or augments soon.

Weapon Controller

The weapon controller in Eavor has gone through a couple revisions already, but it's currently in a state that I'm not super happy with.

The current system allows for "chaining" weapon attacks together in any order with interpolation (which I assumed would be nice when adding more animations in the future), but I'm to the point where I don't think the 'fun factor' of the game will come from different weapon animations, but more from the properties/effects that each weapon has.

This being said, I'm thinking about recreating the weapon controller to just have really basic animations, and a linear combo (similar to Guardian Tales).

I'll play around with this in the following weeks, and test it out with weapon effects as well.

Dodging, I-frames, perfect evades

I finally got around to animating the player's 'roll' action this week, and fleshed out my state machine class to allow for easy implementation!

So basically, the player can now roll to dodge attacks, which gives the player a few i-frames.

Next on the list is to add a 'perfect evade' system (similar to flurry rushes in BOTW), but I'm still in the process of thinking that through, as I want the game to support multiplayer in the future, and slowing down the timescale of a multiplayer game is obviously... difficult? lol

Maybe I'll just slow down the speed of the enemy that was evaded....

Treasure Chests!

I've had a placeholder sprite for the treasure chests for a while now, but finally got around to 3D modeling, animating, and rendering out a treasure chest spritesheet!

So now the artstyle is a bit more consistent accross all the current game objects - although I still need to cleanup the render a bit, here's the current treasure chest sprite and model:

3D model of treasure chest

2D sprite of treasure chest

I also made an 'open' animation for the chest, but still need to animate the item popping out of it - probably gonna be similar to ROR.

Conclusion

So that's it for this week of development!

I probably spent around 12 hours total working on Eavor this week, which is honestly pretty good compared to the 1-2 hours I got over the summer :(

Anyway though, that brings us to my plans for next week's development!

• Polish interaction system

• Add enemy targeting system

• Re-animate weapon to try and fix combat to feel smoother (with targeting system)

• Add 1 more skill to Barklings, and give Akiesto a couple attacks

• Add some sound effects to the current combat encounters (hit effects, monster sounds, etc.)

• If I have free time, I'd like to add a blocking/pary system as well... we'll see!

Thanks for reading this week's blog post - hope you have a good weekend/next week! :)