Progress Update: play-fighting entities

Hey all!

As mentioned in the previous progress update I'll be talking about the fighting system again - let's get right into it

Play-fighting system

I've been focusing more on entity moves than player moves since I last mentioned this. The goal I have in mind here is to make entities that have two moves so that they don't feel too simple. For bosses, they'll probably have three or more moves, but that is not something I've dipped my toes into yet. Anyway, let's have a look at the various moves that exist currently.

The Purple Tentacles have their existing extend-up-and-grab move, but they also now have a horizontal version with less range that takes more HP away. This means they'll sort of act like a moving wall and you need to be careful about how you approach them, especially when there are multiple of them grouped up.

The Bee Ladies have a honey bubble move - the bubble chases after you but can't make sharp turns, so it is dodgeable. My idea for the second move is a simple arms-open-arms-closed grab when you're close to them, which is how you can get into the flying animation.

The Plant Walker has the spin-on-ground move: they telegraph their move by lowering to the ground and accelerating their spin, and then they start moving around. I've only done one move so far here, so another one should be coming later... maybe something that gives them a bit of vertical travel?

The Bush Mimic extends its red tentacles quickly out of the bush, poking you if you're close, and then revving up to spin them, continuously reducing your HP. A second move I've been thinking about here is a "relocate", where you see a red puddle dash away so the mimic can hide itself in a new spot.

Blob Plants have one move so far, and that move is a ground slam with their jelly part. It would be fun if they had some bounce to them after hitting, so maybe instead of a slam it'll become a ground bounce. A secondary move is still to be determined.

The Pink Slimes have done away with their simple down-grab. In its place they now have a slime wall move that acts as an obstacle that traps you temporarily, and they have quite the range with how tall the slime wall can be because it's a shader (VFX). The second move is transforming from a simple puddle of slime into a slime lady that slides around on the ground and bumps you. The change to a slime lady also means some changes to the existing animation.

Frog Ladies already jump around so I figured I'd make them dive down at you, which is their first move. Their secondary move is shooting spinning and curving magic balls towards you, so they are the second entity with projectiles (after the Bee Ladies). Both of these moves encourage the player to jump and slide around to dodge them. I've also started working on the group animation I ran a poll for a few months ago, which means they'll have a secondary animation once that's done.

The final entity with a planned move is the Flying Stone, which will have a bubble shield that bounces you away when you activate it by getting too close. I'll have to rethink their positioning now that they just take a bit of your HP instead of instantly activating an animation, so they can be a bit more aggressive and a bit faster.

The Bush Vine is something I'm not sure if I'll give a move to - since they're just part of the pit minigame. We'll see though, maybe I can make the pit more fun now that we have all these new movement features.

For the player, there's two new moves work-in-progress art-wise. One is a "sniper"/long range move, and the other is a different ground slam move. I'm hoping to go back to focusing on player moves again this week, I especially want to make some movement-based ones e.g. a ground slide, bouncy move, some sort of upwards dash-attack... I have a lot of ideas here, we'll see what ends up being made :)

Other stuff

I've got wall sliding and jumping implemented, so I'll continue fleshing that out and finish its mostly finished static sprite. The only thing that really remains here is making sure that wall jumps always leap away from the wall.

Currently I've also implemented money dropping, so when you defeat an entity you loot them by entering their animation (which enters its end sub-animation immediately when they have 0 HP). The money is a few particles that just automatically go towards the player and get absorbed.

I also decided to dip my toes a bit more into sound effects here which was fun - I've been changing and layering sounds from sound libraries to make more fitting and unique sounds. The Bee Lady honey bubble pop, Plant Walker spinning, Purple Tentacle poking, Frog Lady ground bump, and Frog Lady ball shooting all have sounds that I've mixed to be more fitting, and I'll probably keep doing more sound design in the future unlike before where the sounds are as-is from sound packs.

Anyway, that's this progress update done. The next progress update should be in about 3 weeks, but I might post some teasers in the Discord before then.