Week 2 - Controls

Over the last week, the team worked mostly on completing the character controls, level design, more player animations, and enemy brainstorming

This week, my focus was on finalizing the character controls so that Herman and Nathan would have everything they need to work on level design. I also worked on organizing the schedule further so we would have a clearer idea of how long we should take on all the major tasks.

Attacks required a few steps to implement, because I needed to create a bunch of different attacks for one basic attack input, based on a variety of different variables.

First, I had the basic check that the player was in the attack state. Then, I had to check if the player was grounded or in the air. I also had to check if the player was holding up or down on the keyboard or joystick, so that it would perform a directional attack instead. Finally, because our basic grounded attack has a three-hit combo, I had to implement a basic three-hit combo system.

Checking the grounded state was simple, as I just set a boolean to true or false depending on if the player was in the In Air state or in the Grounded state. Checking if the player was holding up or down was also simple, as the Input Handler I created for the player was already checking that by default, so it was just a matter of calling that input within the attack state. The three-hit combo required me to create an attack counter variable that would count up every time a basic attack was used on the ground, and would reset if the player jumped. This still requires some work, as I will need to implement a timer that will reset the combo counter if an attack is not used within that timer, but the core functionality is finished.

Hitboxes and damage have not been applied to the attack state yet. I will be implementing a test enemy first before I add that functionality.

The fireball state was very simple to implement. It just required reading the input from the Input Handler, and then implementing logic that can fire a fireball, and recoil the player somewhat. I set the fireball cast to an animation trigger so the firing can be synced with the animation when it is added. The recoil required setting the player's velocity to send them slightly backwards when the fireball is fired. The actual fireball firing has not been implemented yet, as I will be creating the dummy enemy to test it on first. For now, it is just a debug statement.

Initially I thought the spin attack would be quite difficult to implement, as none of the other abilities required holding down the input. However, it ended up being the easiest one by far to implement, and I completely redid my first attempt at it from scratch.

Unity's new Input System allows one to set various interactions for different inputs, including holding down a button. My initial attempt involved me setting up a bunch of timers and booleans, but that ended up not being necessary. I could simply add a hold interaction to the charge input.

Then it was just a matter of changing the state when the button was released, and setting the player's velocity if they were in the air, as our spin attack propels the player somewhat if they are in the air, for extra platforming mobility.

Like with the standard attacks and the fireball, the hitboxes and damage will not be implemented until after the test enemy is created.

With all of these done, I was able to push the build to the team so Herman and Nathan could start using it to build the level design.

While testing the movement, I noticed a bug when playing with a controller in which all forward momentum would be cancelled if the player used an ability input. This bug was only encountered when playing with a controller but not a keyboard. This bug is not a high priority as it is still playable on keyboard, but it will be something to address when polishing up the game.

For organization, I worked on adding due dates to all the tasks we had listed, so we had a rough estimate of how much time we had to finish everything. These dates are flexible and not finalized, as it depends entirely on the team's availability. I left a lot of room for things to be pushed into the month of November so that things could be delayed. In fact, I expect most things to be delayed somewhat. That's just the nature of game development, after all.

I also started a preliminary sketch of the final boss design. The design is not final, but I wanted to start working on the aesthetics and feel of the boss so that the moveset could be designed around it.

My gut feeling on this design is that it feels too derivative of Hollow Knight, so I will be iterating upon it further this week.

As far as issues for the past week, I have already mentioned the bugs I encountered while making the player controls, which will be fixed in the coming weeks when we start putting everything together. I was also told that I need to give more notes on animations so that Herman and Matt have a much clearer idea of what they should look like going forward. While it wasn't much of an issue for most of the player animations, as their decisions worked fine, it is something I will be keeping in mind in particular for the boss, as the boss animations need to sell its attacks for it to work really well. While designing the boss, I will create detailed notes on each attack animation.

In the first week, when I was first making the character controller, I found I was overworking myself on the days I made it, as I had been spending the entirety of those days programming and setting up the game. This led to me getting a couple of migraines on those days I was developing. Going forward, it should be less of an issue, but I need to make sure to pace myself so I don't burn myself out too early in the process.

As game director, I also realized I need to check in with the team more so I know how much progress is being made each day. I will check in with everyone at least every couple days just to make sure work is actually being done and that we are making good progress on the game, on top of our regular meet up times.

Until next time.