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Devlog No.013
🕑 Added 2024-03-20 23:42:54 +0000 UTCSo this Devlog I don't have a huge amount to report on, but do have some things to talk about.
First thing on the list is just reporting what I've gotten done. As of now I've finished up another puzzle shrine involving the wind inflation spell and magic star spell as the core focus to it. As well, the puzzle shrine includes a few new mechanics.
The first of these new mechanics is silence which prevents you from using spells. In this particular case there are purple glowing pedestals which will silence you in an area. While silenced, Aria emits noticeable particles showing her breath. As well you can see a blue X over the spell at the top of the UI and you will get a fizzle sound if you try to cast a spell. I tried to make this fairly obvious without crowding the energy bar further. If it's not obvious enough though I will attempt to remedy it. This would likely be easy to do by placing a blue X above Aria's head or a red x in a speech bubble or some other method. I want to avoid this however as I don't want to crowd the screen.
The second new mechanic are teleporters. For this puzzle shrine though they are exclusively used to prevent you from getting stuck. I also added positional audio to these teleporters so when you get close, they have some ambient sound that will gain volume as you get closer based on which side of them you are on. And of course, I'll take this new technique and I can apply it to things like waterfalls and such. (Which is something I've planned to do for a while but just hadn't gotten around to it.)
The third new mechanic is the door unlocking mechanic. This is just meant to add shortcuts to some areas in case you revisit them. I'm going to upload a video that shows off the shrine with limited spoilers. At the end, you can see this new unlocking mechanic. Basically you will have to give a small amount of power to a shrine and it will unlock/open an area permanently to your save file. For this shrine, this is meant to let you come back to it to donate more power to the statue that comes afterward.
The final mechanic is the boob power level upgrade statue. I haven't yet made the statue itself so that's not yet implemented, but the system to make it work is. I can't show anything for this yet really, though the room that it's located in is pretty much done. So I just have to design the statue and give it the 'upgrade' and it'll be ready to go. I will be delaying on actually making this shrine apply a max boob level upgrade though until 0.6. I want to release 0.5 and allow players to test out the boob sizes without limits first. When I finish 0.6 though I will have a few max boob size upgrades and the system for boob size limits and benefits and all that will be fully implemented. At that point you'll be able to gather the upgrades whenever you like and they'll stick. (Though it will require testing)
As far as the beach levels, they're coming along. I have laid out almost all of them, but they aren't detailed yet and I haven't added any new enemies just yet. I have one enemy made and I'll go ahead and upload his sprite to show him off. So far I have a plan to add two filimuri enemy types, a new flying enemy type, the rat enemy that I am showing here, and a pufferfish enemy. For the filimuri enemies I plan to add a poison mechanic to them. When they land a hit on you, they poison you and it will drain your energy faster. You remove the poison by picking up any candy. It's purely meant to apply just a little bit more pressure to the player to push forward.
With that said, I am going to design the filimuri enemies to be more defensive. They won't really chase you and instead keep an area guarded. They'll only pursue you if you get too close, and they'll back off if you get too far away. The filimuri enemy type will be inflatable of course.
The pufferfish enemy type will actually be mostly neutral and will ignore you for the most part. However, if you use the inflation spell with him on screen, he will puff up and become an obstacle that hurts you if you touch him. So he will be the 'be careful who you inflate' enemy type of the region. The rat enemy will not be inflatable and, in fact, is going to be immune to spells. His gimmick is going to be that he rushes up to you, stuns you, and steals your spell.
One other note regarding the beach level is that I'll be working on a new spell and weapon too, but I don't want to talk about them yet because I'm not certain how they will come out in the end. But for the next couple weeks I am just going to be working on the beach level and enemy types. I also have the NPC of the month and she has been fully designed. I just need to animate her puffing up and she'll be done.
So that's all for what's been going on and what the plan is going forward. I want to talk for a moment about sound design though. For me, I really only crop sound and adjust it's volume. I rely heavily on packs of SFX that I can scrounge together that are either free to use, or I have obtained a license. In the case of that, I've gotten a small library of varied sounds.
If you're looking for sounds for a game you might be designing, I highly recommend looking up the GDC and the free sounds they provide every year. They have quite a lot of them. As well, I know that Bluezone has some free sample sounds you can use.
But back to obtaining SFX, I learned recently to be a little careful about getting these. Make sure that you read the fine print. Having a license to use SFX doesn't necessarily mean you can use them in a game. You also have to read the EULA and a EULA might specify that you can only use the licensed sounds if you have an active subscription. For someone like myself who already has to carefully manage what little money they have, an active subscription is not a tenable option for sound design in a game that I do not clearly know when it will be released.
With that all said, I'm always on the lookout for cheap perpetual licensed SFX I can use. If you ever want to help me, feel free to tell me about bundles of sounds for very cheap. I can always use more if I can afford them. Though I cannot accept SFX sent to me that are licensed to you. It has to either be public domain or I have to be able to obtain a license for myself or I cannot use it.
And that will be all for this devlog! Thank you for supporting me thus far!
