#spellfist-3d

I’m swamped with work, so the progress been slow. I’ve also hit a conceptual wall with being able to juggle enemies and until i decide if i want to revert the ragdoll physics system back or if i can squeeze the juggle animation loop into the working system there won’t be much progress, since juggling enemies is one of the main mechanics and i can’t just hope it will kinda work and leave it at that.

I’ve been plenty of code cleanup, removing tons of things that are not working or simplifying things. The fire mechanics is a function library that “just works” into whatever you plug it into.

Switched over the goblins to a new rig. I honestly tried retargetting animations, but it proved useless. Editor either crashed, or just produced no result, so i just remade all of the animations. This allows me to save them as clips and poses, why is way more efficient than just saving a whole file for every animation, and besides, i need the practice.

I’ve also tried the combat after a long break, and it felt really good, so maybe i can just rush out some alpha combat test after tying up enemies working with the knockdowns and ragdolls. The gravity gun still seems broken-ish though, i have to look into why object are spazzing out when being picked up, something is probably still colliding with a held object.

Putting the SPELL back into SPELLFIST. Having the systems interact is the most fun and i still have one small thing to add. but the ragdoll stuff keeps breaking, probably because it tries to exit the ragdoll twice or something like that. Then the demo level is all blocked out, i just need to add some midsections and a little bit of verticality, and then actually add the planned puzzles.

Here’s some more gameplay, showing the dodgin i’ve been working on. I’m still figuring out a way to leave a player trail to better indicate the dodge.

Besidethat i’ve redone some animations and made skellies a little bit more anatomically correct. I want to try some artstyle experiments, but i’ll probably do it on ghouls first.

I’ve also found and fixeda glaring hole in enemy BT, where they got stuck doing nothing, or forced to do retreating when there were attack tokens available, so now they are more active, while keeping the engagement logic i’ve made and they now can pick one of the top % of suitable attacks, making them more varied and not trying to headbutt you all of the time.

Now, the only real issue is enemies being pushed away by the player pawn, something i don’t want at all, since i’m relying on close pawn contact a quick googling did not yield anything, so i’ll try experimenting, but maybe i’ts me doing something wrong (as always).

Here’s some more improvement over the weeks.

I’ve unified the way throwables work, and now it’s incredibly easy to create new ones, all while being child blueprints of a single one.

i’ve made use of static mesh sockets and using the bounds to check if the object is heavy or not, it changes where the object is placed, in the hand or just in the center. I just need to add the animation cycle for the heavy objects.

The only real issue is that the objects spaz out when settling into the hand socket, especially when it’s moving, so if all fails, i’ll just hide the hands completely and do the throw thing like Dishonored does it, then again, DMoMM had full body holding animation and everything worked, i have some trouble with bigger objects scraping the floor on launch. Once this is done this finishes the gravity gun component and i’ll just add the grapple mode for the enemies.

The funniest thing, when you have to get back into the code laid down almost at the start and restructure it.

In the last two weeks i’ve straightened out how the player receives damage, how traps give out damage, how enemies signalthe damage taken and how the ragdolling, ministuns, juggles and stuns interact and try not to break something along the way.

I’ve also made a better hurt widget, added a proper hurt indicator and laid out groundwork to add a proximity HUD indication, since i think it’ll aleviate the tightness of first person camera. I’m also looking into more on-screen effects and clearing up the hit particles, so they don’t clutter your view.