First AI and Weapons Update (Pre Alpha 0.02)

As it turns out, Quarantine is a very productive period with which to develop games.

Much has been done, so let's go through the additions...

First Enemy AI Playable

The first enemy, codenamed "Void Soldier" has been more thoroughly fleshed out (pun intended). He's got a full sprite, animated, and fires projectiles that can damage the player. Using the AI system I had been working on (and mentioned in the last Devlog) he will traverse the map, and upon realising the Reaper is close, he'll attack, move around, jump to other platforms and generally be a nuisance. 

Whilst he's pretty generic, he is of course a lowly grunt in the grand scheme of things.

60FPS Physics

Something of a technical point, I have set the physics system to run as close to 60fps (0.016666667 seconds per frame) so that it matches up with the desired rendering frame rate. I hope to get the final game to ship and run at 60fps on basically anything, so it made sense to tie the physics in with that. What's nice here, is that I can shove everything (including animations) into the physics loop and have things organic wait on each other. Just makes things smoother and I don't now have to worry about desync.

More Weapons

The Rocket Launcher and also Micro Missiles have now also been added. They both use similar physics and logic, so it made sense to do them at the same time. One is just a bit bigger than the other. 

It's really very fun dashing around, swapping weapons and firing off different weapon types as you go!

Refined Movement

A big part of the game experience for me is the movement and traversal of levels. I've spent a lot of time getting the movement and character controller to feel as good as I can. Speeds nicely interpolate up and down based on the current action your character is doing. For example, momentum when jumping is conserved only in certain situations. This makes the player easier and more accurate to control.