Hey! It's been a while

Hi there. It's been almost 3 months since the last devlog, sorry for that!

Been quite busy with real-life stuff but also with the game, so let's check out some of the latest updates on Project Goblin:

Enemies and water

Not long ago I implemented the ability for the player to swim, which included all kinds of stuff from water bodies detection, to water splashes, bouyancy and so on.

All that logic has come in useful now, because I have implemented water detection for enemies. Right now this is used to kill enemies that get in contact with water, rewarding the player that might think about throwing his enemies into a lake or a body of lava.

Grab, carry and throw!

I've added another feature, being able to grab, carry and throw enemies! You are also able to throw an enemy to another, an action that will put both on the ground.

Implenting this has been quite easy, since I already had the logic to throw enemies away with a shield bash. In order to carry the enemy around all I've needed to do is assign the enemy node to a body attachment on the player's armature, more specifically his right hand.

This could be easily expanded to allow doing this with things that aren't enemies, which could work great for puzzles!

End of the adventure

I also reworked the Game Over screen completely. Before it just banished the player model and showed a very simple "game over" message.

Now there's a fade to black, the camera focuses on the player who does an animation while the word "GAME OVER" burns with a fire effect while the message below it appears. It also offers the player the option to quickly reload the last save, load any save or quit the game.

The player also has multiple animations which vary depending on how the player died. For example, if the player drowns while diving the corresponding game over animation will play. Hope you don't get to see those often when playing the game!

Character's face

Finally got to make the face of the main character! I postponed this for the longest time because I'm not good at drawing but hey, it didn't end near as bad as I feared. Will still probably redo the whole model before the launch of the final game but for now, I'm quite happy with it.

The character is capable of doing facial expressions. This has been done by applying the usual UV offset on the face texture, which holds 16 different expressions. The system I have set up allows to tie facial expressions to certain animations as well as forcing a particular one, which will come in useful when making cutscenes.

Enemy refactor

Yeah! As mentioned in the last devlog, I wanted to clean up the player controller and do a refactor of the enemy AI. And it's done! It's been quite time consuming but I'm happy with the result. Everything related to them is way better organized now, allows me to set them up in a more comfortable way and the generic AI is easier to work with and override, which means making new enemies should be a piece of cake! 

I've also included the flying enemies as part of this refactor: they are way better at finding the target when it gets out of sight and overall navigation, and they are capable of orbiting a target like a vulture would do.

Anything else?

I've also been working on sound design. It's almost done! Got sounds for the UI, environment interactions and most combat actions. Still pending is the enemy sounds and probably the most important one, the "hit" sound. Want to make sure I have it nailed before showing it, so please be patient! Next devlog will probably have some new combat footage this time with new enemies and sounds.

Still a lot to do until then though! Thanks for reading through all this, this one was a bit longer than expected. See ya!