Summer Work Station

     The best thing gamedev-wise about school was the comfortable work environment. In my dorm I had a work desk and I also had access to the windowless Gaming & Simulation Lab (which is getting a redesign & lounge area soon!) where I could work for 6 hours that felt like only 2. I also had my choice of a sturdy wooden chair and a spinning wheely one.

     At home I just lay on my bed. Tossing and turning as my arms fall asleep. If I'm going to develop all summer I needed a better work environment. I moved furniture in my room around in a way that let me use a short dresser as a desk. My parents took notice and came back to me with the setup you see above. All old stuff just laying around in the basement or at work.

      I can now gamedev in an upright position with dual monitors, a wireless mouse, drawing desk, and a scanner within arm's reach! This is going to be a very productive summer.

Status Report #38

     First week of summer over already? And a lot got done too? This time out of the classroom has been great so far. I've made a nice routine for myself of handling blog stuff in the morning, working on Unicorn Quest all day, taking a workout break around 5pm, and watching a couple episodes of Attack on Titan at midnight. I have comfortable work conditions now (a chair instead of a stack of pillows) and I see production increasing even further starting today because I have no plans other than making progress for the next few weeks.

     Watch a video of combat in action and take a look at this week's status report!

Scrapped: Subtle Bouncing

     A very annoying and game-breaking bug came up yesterday. It allows you to walk through any solid object if you push into it for a second. To get around this, I spent all of yesterday rethinking the way I do collision and went back to the problem I had months ago. In the end, the answer was obvious (like always) and I simply needed to get rid of a polish effect.

    There was a subtle bounce movement when Clover ran that make her gallop feel more natural, but that movement pushed the sprite just enough to clip through walls. I tried putting protective fields around everything to turn off the bounce when near something, but Clover's collider ignores it. In the end, it just needed to be scrapped. I'm really sad to see this nice touch go, but I'd rather have imperfect character animation than a broken collision system.

Enemy Collision Handling

     A problem I've had for a while now is a glitch where you can run into an enemy from the side and push until you clip through them. After that Clover's collision stops working and you can run through everything like a ghost. To fix that I needed to change the way I approached enemy collision boxes.

    In a way similar to how walls work there is an outer layer that prevents sprites with smooth translations from doing so (to avoid wall clipping). That layer is it's own object that recognizes if you are in battle, and if so, it activates the same properties as a wall. Under that layer is the enemy hitbox where it can damage you or you can damage it (assigned with an elemental tag that causes status effects). Just underneath that layer is the character controller collider. That's the one that makes the object move and keep from moving through other solid objects.

     With this setup I no longer clip through anything when running about. I still have to test  how enemies interact with each other and the environment, but things are looking hopeful right now.

More details on enemies when I finish the current two.