Hello everyone!
After straightening out some issues that occurred with the new launcher (seen above), the game has stabilized again. We apologize that no updates have been published for the last few days, mostly due to real life (yeah, we know, we know) and work outside of the game. This weekend, we hope to change all of that.
First, we'd like to introduce three enemy concepts for the first couple of levels and explain what kind of AI they will have.
The image above shows the three sample sprites for each of the new enemies. The one on the far left we call the Dark Specter, a shadowy being wandering the lands of Daggerhelm in search of a soul or two to steal. The one in the middle we call the Shadowsoul, a lost soul from a previous hero plagued with darkness and spite. The third enemy on the far right we call the Stash Raider, a greedy, feisty little goblin that fears the light and strangers, and is only found in chests filled with loot. (Good luck getting him out of there though).
You will notice that the Stash Raider seems similar to the loot chest we've posted before:
However, this time, the chest will attack you if you get too close. Killing the Stash Raider inside the chest will drop tons of good loot to pick up, but they are rare (one or two per level).
The Dark Specter and the Shadowsoul will most-likely only be used for the tutorial area found by accessing the portal at the north end of Broken Shield Castle.
Now to talk about the enemy AI we will be using for these new creatures. We've been studying how our random walking method for our shadow rangers is working out, and so far we've decided its decent enough (for now) to leave alone, because, despite its randomness, it is fairly reliable for aggressive gameplay mechanics; though, some errors occur that make them look rather stupid, which will be cleared up soon enough.
The Dark Specter and the Shadowsoul will be quite interesting enemies. Instead of walking around randomly, we will be implementing an A Star algorithm to their AI. They will walk around like the shadow rangers, except when the player gets too close, they will begin to pursue them rapidly. We think the Shadowsoul should move faster than the Dark Specter because their nature seems much more aggressive.
The Stash Raider will be stationary, and will glare out of his little box at the player in hopes of you (or anyone) coming too close to his loot. Within a certain distance, if the player comes too close to the Stash Raider, they will be attacked repeatedly until the player leaves the area or dies. This makes ranged attacks all the more important. However, Stash Raiders will use a ranged attack if they feel threatened at a longer range away. Stash Raiders also have high health and armor (the chest blocks most of the damage) but yields high rewards.
The Shadowsoul and the Dark Specter will be added within the next few days as wandering enemies for players to kill. We apologize that no new prototype version will be released before v0.01. The reasoning behind this is because too many prototypes will make it seem like we aren't adding big chunks of content quickly (which we are trying desperately to do).
Thank you for reading!
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