Samurado Updates!!

SO! It's been a hot minute since we posted an update for Samurado. As mentioned we stopped working on the game during our move, so we lost a little over 2 months while we relocated and got settled in.

But now that we're here, and settled (except for the storage room. It's scary in there...) we've gotten more done in the last 3 weeks then we have in the last 3 months!!

So: I'm VERY excited to be sharing these updates with you.
For all your Hall of Famers, you'll be getting your alpha build in the next 24 hours. I can't promise it'll be today just cause it's Halloween so it's a family evening for us :)

But without further ado, here is a list of all the changes that have been made since we moved:

TLDR: if you don't care about the below line by line upgrades, here's what you need to know: My focus for this update was to make the game ACTUALLY feel like a game, and not some broken pile of crap. I can't promise it's balanced or fair yet, but it's MUCH more stable than ever, and looking better than ever as well!

- MASSIVELY improved the Ranged Attack (sword throw) - it was previously super lame and not fun to use, because you simply pressed the button and it would wind up, then throw on a timer. I re-did it from the ground up, so now it will throw when you RELEASE the button (and if you hold it long enough you'll get a CHARGED sword throw to do much more damage.)

- Your Ranged sword can now be RECALLED from anywhere by pressing the sword throw button when it's not close to you. I felt this gave players an unfair advantage because the player has a 'pickupRadius' stat for manually picking up the ranged sword when you're close enough, and it was even upgradeable.

- So to fix the above, I added a damage multiplier that gets applied when you MANUALLY pick up your sword (visible with the little shine particle that's always on the tip of your ranged sword) - this too, is upgradeable.

- I also re-wrote the ENTIRE sword throw code, because it was massively bugged and flawed. It's much more stable now.

- I added a system that gives me total control over how the player's attacks are INTERRUPTED by taking damage, which feels much more stable than before now.

-Fixed about 20 SUPER ANNOYING bugs that was just ruining gameplay. Like a bug that sometimes wouldn't detect when you entered a room and so no enemies would spawn. Enemies also cannot spawn on walls now. Chests (mostly) cannot spawn and block your path in the hallways (though I found a pesky edge case where it can still happen which has not been fixed yet.)

- Spent a STUPID amount of time on an EnemyWave system. I don't have enough enemies in the game to properly make use of it, but trust me, it was needed and important. This algorithm determines which enemies to spawn into a room, how many, tracks 'familiar (ie. enemies you have seen before) and new (enemies you have not yet encountered) so you don't get a whole wave of enemies you don't know how to deal with. Plus override options to make spawning bosses or mini-bosses very easy, and direct control over each level which enemies are allowed to spawn, which will make it easy for me to control the difficulty curve of the game.

- Sprite sorting has FINALLY been changed. I thank the Unity Awards nomination for that since they wanted game footage and I didn't want to give them crap where sprites were clipping into each other lol. So it's looking better now!

- Made a longer, more interesting level for you to play in

- Added BREAKABLE OBJECTS. Cause who doesn't love those? There's only 3 right now, but the system is there and making more will be a breeze.

- Added DOORS and the ability to go to different rooms (I know...doesn't sound like a big deal, but it was a pain to figure out how to do this with the procedural levels. Got it all sorted though!)

- Also, a HUB area has been added! The 'upgrades' don't do anything yet as it's just a placeholder, but you can spawn an unlimited number of dummies and barrels, cause who doesn't love unlimited breakable objects?

- Healing statues! - Unsure if I want enemies to drop health or not at this point, so I added dedicated rooms that you're guaranteed to run into at critical points throughout the first area.

- I didn't like the visuals for the dash before, so I made it glowey, and since he's an avadado it just didn't feel right unless it was GREEN.

And I think that's the bulk of it!

We'll be doing a full devlog in the coming weeks for all these changes, we just wanted to wait till the end of October.

Thank you all SO SO much for your continued support, and I hope you enjoy your Halloween! Cheers and talk soon!