Week 10 - Challenger Approaching

This week, I managed to get a significant amount done, mostly finishing my end of the core feature implementation. I managed to finish the implementation of all the enemies, and I got started on the music for the game.

Last week, I made four more enemies for the level, most of which were for the Ember's Rise area of the Tower, so this week was focused more on creating all the enemies for the Vermillion Summit.

The first enemy I needed to finish was Satan's Eye, which is the last enemy I did not make for Ember's Rise. This was another flying enemy, that also shoots a projectile at the player, so I was able to copy over a lot of the behaviour from other enemies. In general, this was an easy one to implement and it did not take me long.

Next, I implemented the Black Marble Golem. This enemy is a slow, lumbering enemy, but it has a unique attack that makes it one of my favourite enemies. If the player gets too close to it, it will slam its fists down and summon three pillars of fire that spawn one after the other, and the player must either move out of the way or get in between them to avoid them. It should make for an interesting challenge in the final level. It also has a charge move, where if the player is too far away for it to use the pillar, it will charge like a gorilla towards the player to remove some distance between them. And, given its large pool of health, it is one of the tougher enemies to beat, making it a worthwhile challenge for the final area of the game.

Third was the Lost Ember enemy. This is the second stationary enemy in the entire game. This enemy's gimmick is that when the player approaches, it will spew projectiles in random directions around it, making it unpredictable to approach. It fires two projectiles at a time, and they all fire in an arc, meaning the player has to pay close attention if they do not want to get hurt. Because of the stationary nature of the enemy, it can also be placed on walls and ceilings for an added challenge.

Finally, I implemented the Hollow Robes enemy. This enemy is a bit like the Wailing Phantom, except it is ranged. If the player gets too close to the Hollow Robes, it will run away and fire projectiles at the player. These projectiles are also slightly homing. When they are fired, they linger for a little bit before targeting the player and following that trajectory. The Hollow Robes enemy moves more quickly than most of the other enemies in the game, and it has a higher knockback force, meaning it is more difficult to chase it after hitting it. It will be very annoying and another good challenge for the player to overcome.

In general, I tried to make the three Vermillion Summit enemies more complex to kill than all the enemies prior to it, because they are meant to be the hardest obstacles to face before reaching the boss.

The last thing I did this week was start to make music for the game. I began by making the level music. I was inspired by the music of Nier:Automata and primarily used strings and piano to construct the piece. The entire track is made of various layers of different instruments that play in a 40 second loop. As the player progresses through the level, or encounters monsters, or their health gets low, more layers get added to the track gradually, so that the music rises in intensity alongside the game's intensity.

Upon listening to it a day after making it, the music does not feel like it fits the tone of our level enough, it feels too epic near the end. What I really want to highlight is the feeling of isolation and the increasing intensity as you climb the tower, so I may rework this song to better fit what I want for the music. However, I will only do that after making the boss fight theme, as it is more important.

For next week, I need to finish the boss fight music and implement all of the boss' animations that Herman has made throughout this week. I also need to start working on bugfixes and polishes to get ready for the beta build next weekend, and will start work on that after I finish my other tasks.

Until next time.