Project Vault Game Dev Log 029 (Patreon)

It's spooky time! Halloween is here and I hope you all have some fun stuff planned for the end of October! Going to be a busy as heck night for me over here, but I figured I'd give you all a treat with the latest update before things get crazy today haha. Got a lot of cleanup stuff done this month between the con that I'm pretty dang happy about! So lets start going over it a bit!

Black Feather Bandit Concept art: It was about time I finally drew some concept art of these guys up! One of the major enemy groups Bod will have to deal with in the game is the Black Feather Bandits. This group of lil robo birds will be a constant obstacle that Bod needs to contend with on the surface world. Coming up with the mechanical bits and colors for these guys has been on the mind for a bit, but overall I'm super stoked to finally have the artwork wrapped up and ready for me to start modeling them down the road!

Modular Stairs Tool: One of the things that has been bugging me for years now is how clunky Bod's movements on stairs. Spent a decent chunk of time to rework and build a stair step tool that has steps closer to what I'd like in the game. Likewise I got the tool to have a hidden slope that prevents Bod from bouncing as he runs up and down it now! As a bonus a new railing tool to add on to the steps that is modular closed out the design to make it ready down the road for my final design work :3! One final touch is that I've added collision to the top of the stairs so that Bod's code can tell when he is on it. This will allow Bod or even enemies to update animations and movements accordingly to better fit the stairs when traveling up or down them.

Standing movement rework: I got a ton of improvements in on Bod's standing movements! For one some of the animations were cleaned up. But most importantly I got some sync groups and universal tilt mechanics added in so that the animation work I do with a lot of the gadgets/tools works a hell of a lot better! Now Bod tilts into slopes when traveling up or down them and I've updates the turn tilt a bit to make his movement feel smoother. Finally I did a massive rework on the foot IK for bod, putting it in a place that I'm super happy with! It may need some final tweaks for polish down the road, but for now I'm at a state where the IK for the feet when standing are pretty much done for me personally :3!!

Crouch Movement updates: This one isn't too big, but I spent a bit of time cleaning up the animations for Bod's crouch movement while adding another speed. It currently feels a lot better with the movement, although I'm not fully satisfied with it yet haha.

Greybox efforts: The greybox efforts have also continued for the levels! A lot of cleanup was done with the city in general this go around, although I did get some decent progress on a few interiors also :3!

Stealth Level 9: Got a great start on the 9th Stealth level also! So far the initial level build out and enemy placement has been done. Next up I need to start building some of the main character mechanics that will be introduced on this one to make it complete. Should be able to wrap that up next month.

Squish testing: Got a bit inspired on one day to play around with some of the squish material mechanics I've been wanting to try and introduce to the game. Due to bod's size and squishiness, squeezing into tight spots is always going to be a bit of an effort haha. So having a method to help show the squish when Bod is performing some of his moves would be really nice! So far I've got an initial test material down to start with. Still going to need a bit of work to clean it up and get it working a bit more consistently, but for now it's pretty fun to see it in action!

Now comes Turkey month! Outside of the holidays this is shaping up to be a pretty open month for me. Going to be continuing the cleanup efforts going into next month as I'm in the mood to finally start closing out a lot of the mechanics and systems in place currently as I continue building on levels. But till then I hope you all have an amazing Halloween and I'll be chatting with yah all soon enough haha!