September Development Update

Hello everyone! I'm very excited on this fine Monday morning to share some great news with you!! Last month, I spent a decent chunk of time animating and creating the base systems for passing hitbox information to actors, and this month I've made a number of significant advancements.

Firstly, I've implemented a new enemy: the Foundry Soldier! The Foundry is the mindless mechanical army that patrols the world, attacking any and all biological matter in their path. Soldiers are the most common form of Foundry in Blood Crisis. Despite their slow and predictable nature, they can still be lethal if one manages to catch you off guard.

Last month I started my journey into character AI with Xedd, and am still going strong with the Soldiers. Currently, all they know how to do is follow the player, attack when in range, and receive damage. However, that last part is extremely important -- being able to receive damage, not just in the character's code but in the AI itself, is a huge step.

Alpha Knight now (technically) can perform a full ground-to-air combo, and enemies not only react visually with an animation, but now also have fully-functional AI under the hood. Each attack hitbox has its own set of data, and with the exception of a rare bug, multi-hit attacks are also functionally implemented. I can give one attack multiple hits and each one can have unique properties, like different damage values, types, and knockback.

My next steps are implementing the player damage state, and after that, parrying.

Now, for the really exciting news: 

My goal is to have a playable demo out for all Tier 2+ patrons by the end of the year. My original plan for the first demo build was simply a room with infinitely spawning enemies for the player to fight, and every day I get closer to that goal. This being said, one of the big selling points for tier 3 and 4 patrons was experimental/demo builds...so I'm planning on having an early version of the demo out for you guys specifically by the end of September. This initial build will be missing quite a few things. Enemies won't be killable and the player can't die, but you'll at least be able to get your hands on Alpha Knight and test out the basic combo.

As I've continued to develop the game, I'm aware my YouTube channel has sadly fallen a bit to the wayside. In the May update, I published the full script for devlog #2, and the following update I showed a short clip of it, but since then development has moved so far past what I was covering in that video that the in the time I had spent working on it, I had grown sort of dispassionate about it. So many things about the game have changed since Devlog #1 that i kept having to change and adapt the script to try and fit everything in, and it kept just getting bloated and awkward. I will try to put out another update on my youtube channel soon, but it's not going to be the same style of video as DL1, it'll be much more laid back and candid. I do still want to make more edutainment-style videos like DL1, but I think I'm going to separate those from the normal devlogs. It's just too much work in a short period of time.

I'm really excited about the state of development right now, and I hope all my high-tier patrons are excited at the prospect of playing something soon.

As always, thank you for all your endless support. It makes this entire thing possible. Have a great September, and don't forget to listen to the Earth Wind and Fire song on the 21st!