Been a very long time since I've updated this but I'm still working hard on Goblin Pest Control. A lot has been changed and updated since the last post. We've just made the swap to using Spine to do the animation which will grant a ton of benefits. The most important being that we can now have a system to randomly create every goblin from different parts, something which would be completely impossible if we were using sprite sheets, as we were before. Another benefits is of course that we're not using sprite sheets for the characters anymore, which was causing bugs due to their size. No more! This was a huge weight on the whole thing, and now that it's been lifted the potential for variation in the enemies is infinite. In short, expect lots and lots enemy variations in the future.
What else? I replaced the lighting at night time so that it's a lot more efficient.
We've been replacing lots of the placeholder artwork and what's left of the programmer art. We also seem to have settled on final artwork for the tall grass, something which we just couldn't seem to get right. Who know, in a month we might decide to replace it again but hopefully not. For now the game world is a joy to look at (if I do say so myself) and we're so happy that we've settled on an art style that captures our take on the typical fantasy genre.
I've also added a few more enemy types. The rock-thrower goblin who's the basic ranged attack enemy. The rocks can be deflected back by the player. I've added some satisfying particle and sound effects when this happens too. I've also added a poison gas/ mushroom spore goblin who creates a noxious gas cloud on death, blocking off pathways for a little while. The last enemy I've added is a Grog-barrel goblin, who follows the others around, feeding them grog and buffering their stats as an AOE.
With the addition of more enemy types the game is starting to feel more like a game. It's harder now which is a good thing, and the ideas I had about game feel, and the focus on the random level generation are all coming together. Also the I've been able to fully test the adaptive music system, which is working a charm.
Goblin Pest Control is really moving forward at the moment and coming together in the way we had hoped for.
Thanks so much for reading and giving us your attention, even with a distinct lack of screenshots/anything visual in this post.
- James