Blogs - Argonaut_DW

Next update, I've reworked the combat mechanics and added the shield upgrade earlier in the game. When the player presses the RMB the shield is active and they can do nothing else, which works fine - but I'd like to add a limit to how many times the shield can be hit before it fails as currently, the player can just hold the shield button down and then flick it on and off to shoot with impunity at the enemies.

As someone mentioned Robocop, I've also redone some of the graphics and animations of the enemy basic security robot, so it spins the gun around it's finger while idling or reloading. The enemy also reacts a bit quicker and shoots faster to offer some more challenge.

Later on there are shielded enemies too, which the player must outsmart to progress rather than simply destroy. I'm coding a method of planting a virus into the enemy robots, causing them to overheat - this upgrade will be in stead of the gun, so you can either have the gun equipped, or the virus.

I'm also working on the basics of a quest system, where the player can select an objective from a list to have a secondary arrow point them in the right direction. This will hopefully allow me to add some quest-givers into the game allowing the player to persue secondary quests rather than just plugging away at the main objective. Although the main objective will always be displayed and will be a simple progression from one objective to the next until the player completes the game, the secondary objective can be changed so the player can target the goals they choose. I'd rather not have simple NPC quest givers (although there will be some of these once the player starts encountering humans) but also the opportunity to fix robots, deliver items etc.

As a personal note, animation makes so so angry sometimes I feel like punching a hole in the side of a mountain.

So in the last fortnight I've been working on some of the more boring stuff, adding in different save points as well as the autosave feature, and putting together the beginnings of a working main menu screen. For now, I've got the Sun and Earth appearing across the sky depending upon what time it is (local time) although they don't actually move. If you open the game at 1pm, they'll be in a different place than 7pm.

I'm also beginning to tackle the localisation, especially before I start putting in hundreds of strings for the speech and tutorials – I really don't want to have to go through and re-do hundreds of lines, so I'm going to have to tackle that next I think. No fun with nothing *cool* to show for all the work. :(

Finally, I'm getting to the point in the game where the player has gained all of the basic upgrades to their robot through the tutorial levels, and can begin putting together more puzzling rooms with a wider selection of enemies.

Digging through some of the documentation I've got my head around how timelines work, but I'm puzzling out how to get the objects to interact with the timelines effectively. I think I'm going to use Finite State Machines to control the AI, triggering the different states via the code in the timelines, but I'm finding it a bit of a pain.

I've also been pondering cutscenes. Although it is nice and sometimes necessary to use a cutscene to tell a part of the story, there are millions of players who have skipped through every cutscene ever, including thousands of lines of dialogue. I think players should be told the story through gameplay, and that almost everything that is show in a cutscene could be shown through gameplay.

Do people watch cutscenes? Would they be missed if they were removed?