Weekly Roundup - 05/05/2023 - Welcome to Planet Bleatius VI (PLUS: New Build Out Now!) – cookiedraggy

With the previous build we started working on a new area which we put a lot of effort into in terms of visual fidelity, making full use of the new art Fabian made. In this build, one of the main focuses was working towards bringing the rest of the jungle levels up to par.

Lots of new art and polished up art - Some placeholder art was replaced and new art has been added.

Intimacy Options - If you don’t like the short cutscene intros before an animation starts, we have now added an option for you to skip them. Later on there will be a third option for this setting which basically plays the full thing the first time you encounter an enemy and then it will skip it on subsequent encounters.

Made Kobold Hunter projectile more readable.

The game now saves after the intro so you don’t have to rewatch or skip it if you die before reaching the first checkpoint.

Polished up the player ledge climbing animations that head parts of her body still incomplete - only visible when hanging from short ledges.

Added some moody environment particles.

Save system has been added back into the game with an option to pick the starting point when starting a new game in an empty slot.

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For a full list of changes and bugfixes head over to: https://www.patreon.com/posts/released-kincaid-82470958

New Enemy in Development!

Right after we wrapped up the build I started sketching new ideas for upcoming enemies! These will be for the second area again which we’re slowly simmering in the background as we wrap up development on the first planet.

It will be good to have all the environment art and a bunch of enemies done, so we can hit the ground running when we move over to the second planet full-time! ^w^

Upcoming Feature: Map System

The new map system is in the very early stages of development. Null wrote a tool that extracts collision data of all levels into PNG files which I will then use to paint over map chunks.

We’re moving away from the Metroid-style square-grid map and move to a more organic map you might know from Hollow Knight and other modern platformers. We think the unique map chunks really help players to orient themselves and it is easier to see where unexplored areas are. Also from a level design perspective, having to design around screen-grids and sticking to the map was very constraining and frustrating. Now we can make the rooms as big as we want and if we have to, we can cheat a little on the map since not everything is mapped 1:1 necessarily. It’ll also be easier to put markers for closed doors or items and also player-chosen markers on the map.

Until next week!Cookie & Bunny