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Currently debugging the combo's gui which is a bit trickier than I expected. Also working on models for the next floor.

I had to refactor the attack system and fix up some bugs to get this working because of the refactoring and this was reusing some code from my previous hack and slash prototype. But now there's a dual combo button, where if you start off with a specific attack, hitting the button will make either character attack with the next attack in the combo. This one showcases one of Sera's new skills (which launches enemies slightly, stunning them for longer, does more damage and gives her iframes. There's still some bugs to iron out and a combo creation piece to add.  Also Lea has a new weapon which will latch onto enemies and drag other enemies into it (gathering them) but it's not working very well right now, so I'm not showing it yet. I am also slowly polishing bits and pieces of the boss fight since there's small details like a particle effect here or there that are missing. I have also been working on more new models for the next area.

These past two weeks, I was tweaking and fixing bugs in the boss level. I have all assets for the level finalized, some sound effects in, a visual damage indicator (instead of the awkward white numbers) on the cart. I also drew some new assets for the cutscene. I also refactored a little bit of the combo system so that I can add in a new feature that'll make full use of the two character system. I want this new feature before I start working on coop so there's actually something there that'll require close coordination rather than just both players attacking the same enemy.

This week was a mainly focused on improving user experience. Sera now has a menu that pops up when using right click. You can now explicitly direct her to a location, an enemy, an interactable or to use a skill. The menu also activates the slowdown so you can take your time figuring out what you want to do. There are new modes used for controlling Sera. In offense mode she'll automatically go after new or close enemies. Location means she moves to a location (and will dash through enemies). A couple of major bugs were fixed, and all the visual assets are in. I'm now working on sound and the transitions to and from this scene. 

For the most part, the visual assets for the boss fight are done. Initially I was going to go with a ripped up subway car for the platform but I realized handling the weird collisions, how the enemies from the side are going to attack was way too difficult so I swapped to a "maintenance" flat platform thing instead. The level is still going to start with a subway car so the asset won't be wasted.  I just have to fix up some bugs, add in an introduction/sound effects, and the boss fight should be done.

Mostly been working on assets this week. Finally textured the entire subway car and the new enemy. Also have a few additional models that I'm working on in parallel for the 2nd level, so I don't burn out too much on the boss level.

I'm taking a little break from the boss level since I'm a bit frustrated with it right now. Working a bit on new assets for the second level.

I finished texturing a bunch of tunnel assets, including parts of the subway car (not shown here yet). Added in a shader that makes the tiles on the sides of the subway tunnel move. Made a shader for the hurtbox of the enemies in this level. I've been playing around with the lighting in the tunnel, trying to get a reddish/brownish/greenish look. Most of the mechanics are working, including having enemies attacking the cart. I still have some assets including the enemy assets that I need to texture. There's also still a lot of polish that needs to be done.

I made some animations for the new enemy (also showing the final 3D model without textures, I forgot solidify here so the real final model looks a little different). Spent a little too long on a shader for a hit animation but I'm going to put that aside for now and work on all the other assets so I don't get stuck. Still waiting on my friends to test the build on their old macs. If that works out well, I'll upload a version for older macs. I still have yet to make an linux/windows compatibility version as well.

some of the textures in the underground transport area.

example of how things look in compatibility mode for older hardware (opengl)

Compared to vulkan (newer hardware)

I had to divide the lights amount in the opengl one to dial down the brightness, so lighting doesn't match exactly but there's not too much of a difference between them.

I have been working on the model for the new enemy. I also ran into a new issue. Some friends tried playtesting ALAWT on their old mac laptops. It crashed a whole bunch of times, so I am working on a compatibility version using the OpenGL renderer. Luckily, using compatibility mode mainly just a few lighting tweaks and I ended up removing shadows on it. I figured if someone's laptop doesn't even support Vulkan, it'll probably struggle with shadows. 

I'm going to update with a compatibility version/low end version soon. I noticed just removing shadows made it run at nearly 60fps on my budget laptop full screen, so it should be good for lower end devices as well, though I will eventually make that an option in the Vulkan version as well. It's also really hard to notice the missing shadows simply because the maps are already filled with fog and darkness.

 Added a new skill for Sera, a shield that gives invincibility for both her and Lea. However, the shield saps her health over time and Sera cannot move during shielding. However, Lea is allowed. This skill will basically be required during the boss fight.

In addition, there is more control over Sera's dashes now because of some refactoring changes and bug fixes. if you select a location behind an enemy that Sera needs to get to, she will dash. Using this method, you can force her to dash back and forth. Dashes do less damage though, so it's really for repositioning purposes. But you can also group up enemies using this technique.

However, I also fixed an issue where the enemies used to just target one character (Lea). This allowed Sera to body block them and they had no idea how to deal with that. They do not do that now, they will attack Sera if she's in the way and if a nontargeted character attacks them, they will switch their attention over to her. So overall, they're more aggressive and harder to group up, but I am making a weapon for Lea that will help with that.

Sera still has a small issue where she should be changing her attention over to the next enemy close to her instead of forcing the player to have to manually select, but I will fix that soon.

The refactoring for character controllers is 100% done.

Some of the pathfinding for Sera has been simplified and improved as well, she used to dash into stuff at corners, but now checks if she has a clear line of sight to the enemy. Sera no longer loses health (on the default difficulty) for normal attacks. In exchange, Lea has lost the ability to easily attack multiple opponents with her default ranged weapon. Enemies are also now more aggressive, and more enemies will be added.

The current code is structured in a way where I can dereference a few nodes, reference a player module, swap out a state machine, and that should automatically convert Sera to a playable character. Last thing to do for co-op is to introduce some input filtering. Just need to get a decent joypad for testing first. The idea is to allow someone to just plug in a controller, hit a button and join at anytime during the game. 

I'm back to working out the last few bugs in the boss fight.

prototype design of the new enemy 

Also, some old concept art of the gatherers, the first enemies that are encountered in the game. 

Pragmata looks pretty interesting. I'll probably play it at some point since I'm curious about how the hacking and shooting works together.

The boss fight code is about 80% finished. I'm also designing a new skill for Sera that players will be making use of during the fight. Still have pretty much all of the art assets to texture and still need to design the look of the new enemy.

I am also refactoring the entire the very old and terrible character controller code. This is necessary for co-op functionality since I plan for the 2nd player to be able to hop into the game with the click of a single button. It's also needed for weapons/environmental effects that will be able to affect entity movement and other statuses. With the new changes it should be a lot easier to implement new movement abilities and status effects.  The refactoring is about 50-60% done. 

Thanks for your comment and suggestions! The control scheme allows players to move both characters at once. Lea is moved using entirely using wasd and Sera only uses the right mouse button. Sera's interactions, attacks, and movement are all mapped to the one button. Sera's attacking behavior is reliant on the state of the enemies or their distance from her. I am still working on a joypad scheme, but it would definitely require an auto aim. Your idea of an auto combo system is interesting; I could simplify the attack system even more by including a button where both characters attack the same thing or allowing for auto attacking as an option.

I'm making some progress on the first boss fight. I spent a lot of time (more than I would've liked) debugging issues with inconsistent hit detection, which I think came from Godot's raycast being used against an Area3D. It wouldn't detect it sometimes. I found a workaround and now the hit detection is 100%. 

Also trying to move the shapecasts using IK + my custom stretching script for these new enemies did not work either. This was due to Godot not updating skeleton positions within PhysicsProcess. Apparently it's a complicated and unwieldy process to get those positions. I found a workaround for that as well, and it works fine.

Spontaneous enemy spawning is working now, but I still have a few more features for this fight I want to add. My plan is for Lea to take care of the enemies coming in from the front, but there are going to be threats from behind the platform as well.

Development should be a lot smoother now that it's more routine stuff that I'm familiar with.

Thanks!

Working on instantaneous enemy spawning for the boss fight. Revisiting Sera's health loss, I'm going to remove it from basic attacks and it'll only come into play for special attacks.

I think it's hard to recommend something without a visual reference and some more detail on the story. Are the fungi fighting each other? or is there an external threat? In addition, some basic ideas would be to think of enemy variety and then adapt them to your basic enemy type. For example, a big chunky mushroom is a tank enemy. A fast enemy might be thin, gangly and small. 

Been working on a new enemy. A mix of IK and actual animation so that it can accurately target the players.

I'm currently working on the first boss. The first step was figuring out Godot's IK system. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a stretch option out of the box, so I tacked a script onto the skeleton to allow for that.

Here's an image of some of the assets for the boss fight that I made a while ago.

I've been brainstorming local co-op implementation. I need to add much needed controller support. Sera's current controls all trace back to a single node in the scene tree. She's entirely controlled by the right mouse button, and in a coop game the Sera player would default to the controller. I think players should have a choice of an extremely simplistic control scheme (point and click) like in singleplayer (this one will show up first since it's a fairly simple tweak) or more fine grained control (joystick directly controlling movement + buttons) to allow for different preferences. 

I've also been thinking of further reducing required dialogue, even in the intro, so players can get to the action/gameplay faster. Maybe throwing players into a fight immediately so people can get a feel for the combat up front.

Thanks! It is a single player game where you can control both characters at the same time. Now that you've mentioned that though, I really like the idea of local co-op.

Link to demo which covers the first level (no boss yet): https://potatoptarmigan.itch.io/alawt

I'm developing an action horror game where almost everything even the combat, relies on both characters. The combat is in real time, with a simple control scheme and a slowdown function to allow players to easily control both characters at once.

Some background info:

Story summary: An unknown event merges strange beings and objects from other dimensions into a biology lab. The story follows a slowly mutating security guard named Sera and a junior scientist, Lea in their attempt to escape. To make matters worse, a mysterious entity has latched onto the remainders of Sera's left arm. While it's given her a boost to healing as well as strength, there are some yet to be known side effects.

Combat: There are different attack effects when attacking with Lea's variety of weapons. For example, one specific weapon allows Sera to pull off a fast kill. Sera's attacks with her sword arm weaken enemies, resulting in them taking more damage from bullets. Unfortunately, Sera mutates per hit so you can't just hang back and let her do all the work. I like flashy action combos in my action games, so I brought some of that to this game. 

Puzzles: Some of them require the usage of both characters in possibly unexpected ways. 

Any feedback is heavily appreciated! At one point I'll probably cover design considerations since there were a lot of things I had to think about when designing the controls. In the past I received some concerns (from people who hadn't played the game) that a dual character game would be hard to control or overwhelming. I'm currently working on the boss for the first level.

Thanks! I'm glad that you enjoyed it! (and that you didn't experience any issues this time)

The voice acting and art was really good and I also liked how you used the role of the player.

I'm hoping to see more of this one day! Also I've really enjoyed all your horror yuri vns.

Hey thanks for letting me know. 

I uploaded another version of the game - if you download practiceRoundOpenGL, it should use something other than Vulkan. It won't look like the vulkan one unfortunately but hopefully it'll work for you. 

If your video card or cpu is very old, it would not support certain vulkan versions which is why you're getting the error. I would keep the window on the game fairly small, there is no graphics scaling available for this version so it'll be much more intensive on your computer if you make the window too large.

You can also try updating your driver following steps like this: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/update-drivers-manually-in-windows-e...

Let me know if you have any other questions.

I wasn't able to recreate this even after disabling my graphics card and asking my teammates, so the best I could do was google the issue and add in some possible fixes for the freezing. The new update has options to adjust vsync and fullscreen/windows in hopes that might help with the issue as well.

Thanks for the comment! Could you let me know what was confusing about them? I admit they were kind of experimental compared to the usual for these types of games.

Hi, thanks for the comment! I'll have to look into that-I've had some optimization problems before but I guess I have to work more at it.  Would you mind giving me the rest of your computer specs?

Ah ok.  The current project I have has yuri but is not (solely) a visual novel.

You can see the current gameplay at the bottom of this post:  https://lettuceleafdev.blogspot.com/2023/09/remaking-home-level-in-godot-4.html 

If you're interested you can message me on Discord.  My id is lettuce#2412.

Hello! Do you have a team yet? Also are you interested in things other than yuri visual novels?