Author: admin (Page 2 of 4)

Original date: June 11, 2022

Finished a new enemy in today’s stream: the Creeper. This guy moves (“creeps”) along a wall and fires a constant laser beam. It’s more of a mix between an enemy and an obstacle. Currently thinking if I create maybe a stationary turret version of it that fires a more conventional weapon, maybe plasma bolts or something. Not sure yet, we’ll see.

Have to admit, creating this one was a bit annoying. Normally the enemies constantly do a raycast at the player to know where the player’s ship is and when it’s close enough to attack. Creeper does so, too, but it kept switching between aggro and not aggro because in like 90% of cases the raycast hit the wall instead of the player. Quite obvious in the end. Unless otherwise specified, the raycast starts at the caster’s origin. Not going to work well if the origin is within a wall. Still surprised some of them came through.

Also had the issue that I check the Creeper’s orientation to know in which directions it moves. For example, if it’s at 0°, it points upward and moves left to right. If it’s at 90°, it points to the right and moves up and down. The former worked, the latter didn’t, the check never became true. Turns out: in the inspector, the Creeper’s rotation was set at 90°. However, a quick print(rotation_degrees) revealed: in-game the rotation was at something like 89.97763°. Little bastard!

Original date: June 05, 2022

This is d4-N23R.vi.exec “Dancer”. It is not entirely clear who programmed it and why, but its mode of attack is unusual. Instead of relying on classic offensive protocols, Dancer possesses four blade-like parts that constantly rotate around its body. When it spots the player, it will charge at the player, using its blades to slice.

I originally intended it to ignore shields and immediately do hull damage, but I wasn’t sure about it.

Original date: May 31, 2022

Started working on the 5th mission. Layout and items are complete, still needs powerups and enemies. I also implemented a tripwire and powerups that act as switches.

Also fixed a bug that prevented the strafe right key from working unless it was manually rebound.

Original date: May 26, 2022

Finally figured out how to make a teleporter that doesn’t destroy and respawn the player. Gotta put the player node into “sleeping”. Thanks to Traumfalke for that hint.

Added powerups and enemies to the 4th level and “Dalande” actually does its job now.

Also, after every mission (usually 3 levels) there is now an additional scene just to make a distinction between missions.

Original date: May 21, 2022

Mission 4 is laid out, just needs enemies and powerups. At least the minimap works, that’s always a struggle.

Managed to fix a couple of bugs, like the game trying to assign keybindings to actions that don’t exist. Someone apparently tried to think for me. I hate when software does that, because it never EVER goes well. In this case, I save the settings (keybinds, volume, …) to a dictionary. The dictionary is then saved to a JSON-file. Dictionaries are not sorted i.e. they are stored in the order the entries are added. HOWEVER, when saving a dictionary to JSON, it actually gets sorted alphabetically. Which, in this case, is stupid, because I was relying on the keybinds to be stored before the miscellaneous settings.

Keybinds are now also displayed correctly, fuel no longer resets to 10 seconds in a new session and invulnerability no longer carries over to the next mission. Also, splash damage no longer damages the player if invulnerability or supershields are active, and seeker mines can now drain supershields.

Original date: May 19, 2022

At the moment I’m still recovering from a Covid infection (tested positive exactly one month ago). My stamina is significantly reduced (can barely make it up the stairs to my place on 3rd floor – 2nd floor for the British, and I tire very easily). I discovered reflex ball training and am trying to use that to slowly build up my stamina again. I can currently go for 5-10 minutes, depending how much I put into it, before I run out of breath.

Anyway, here’s the updates.
Turns out once the enemies noticed the player, they utilized an x-ray routine, allowing them to see the player through walls and barriers. And while they weren’t able to shoot through walls (destructable environment has not yet been implemented is not going to be a thing), they certainly tried. So I removed the x-ray routine. Enemies will now stop attacking when loosing sight of the player.

Also commissioned two songs from an awesome composer. Check him out: https://leonardbernd.com/en
Thanks to him, Cyberwraith now has an official main menu theme. I hope I’ll be able to commission more, once I raked together enough budget.

Finally, I started to lay out the next bunch of missions. If you’d like to see what that looks like, here’s a screenshot.

Original date: May 16, 2022

Long hiatus because of procrastination. Finally managed to implement controller support for the menu. This was really annoying, let me tell you. Godot does provide some functionality for that with focus, but it looks bad (blue frames that usually don’t even fit the button size) and I couldn’t get it to work properly. Problem is I originally didn’t design the menu with controller support in mind, because I didn’t originally intend to add it.

What I did now was to simply detect wether the player is using a controller, and if so make the cursor snap to the buttons when the D-Pad is used. Layered menus were especially annoying becaue I had to keep track of which menu the player is currently in. It’s certainly not the most elegant method, but it works, so that’s that.

This also means that pretty much all basic functionality is now implemented. Most of what’s left is now level design and adding one or two more enemies. Well, and polishing, of course.

Original date: January 17, 2022

Okay, finally managed to update the way the enemies detect the player’s presence. With the previous version it was not entirely predictable how long it took for the enemies to actually see the player. Sometimes it would take them several seconds. With the new version it should work much more reliable.

Original date: January 16, 2022

Messing around with a better way for enemies to detect the player. I guess intersect_ray() will do. Video is the result of a test, wanted to see how it reacts with multiple enemies. Lines just show where they are looking. Interesting effect tho, might use it for something. Boss maybe?

Original date: January 01, 2022

Two more enemies for the bunch.

The Gespenst will appear in later levels and is a dangerous opponent.

Here’s the next of those questions for you: do you view the Dalande from above and does it face away, or does it face towards you and you view it from below?

If you’d like a wallpaper with the Dalande, check out these:

https://www.deviantart.com/irolan/art/Weltraumregenbogenschmetterling-v1-902424882
https://www.deviantart.com/irolan/art/Weltraumregenbogenschmetterling-v2-902425366