[Blog] Vampire Killer Beaumont Engine - Jan 2023 Update #01 (Patreon)

I've been working on the Vampire Killer Beaumont Engine for the last few days, having spent most of my time working on bug fixes, but my primary goal was to fix an animation bug. I've noticed a few more bugs this week, so I still have more to do.

Don't forget that I have a Trello Board set up for this project.

Sub Weapon Animation Fix

The animation for sub weapon use was sometimes too short, so the action length was inconsistent and unreliable. Sometimes it would be so fast that you are barely frozen in place, so you can keep running as if you had not stopped to attack at all. Notice how Elayne doesn't pull her arm back to wind up in the animation, she just tosses her arm forward immediately and then resumes walking.

Fortunately, the solution was simple. The problem was even simpler; if the player is on the 3rd frame of their walk animation, then attack, they start on the 3rd frame of the attack animation. Forcing the player to frame 1 before changing states fixes that!

Healing Head Pats

This was a surprising bug to run into. When taking damage from directly above (or below), players will actually REGENERATE health. Notice the top left corner where the HP bar goes from 2 to 6, having gained 4 HP.

This was a little more tricky, but I have since solved it.

Before the player takes any damage, I initialize a variable called dmg_, which is given a value of "noone." When making contact with an enemy, dmg_ is updated with a new value based on the source of the damage. Then we run it in an equation: subtract the value of _dmg from the Player's current HP value. 

When the rat falls on top of Elayne, she's knocked back before her collision box can acquire the new damage value, so she instead takes damage based on "noone." It turns out, for programming reasons, "noone" is equal to -4. Because there's a double negative, it adds 4HP instead.

I fixed this by setting _dmg to a value of 2 by default, so players will always take 2 dmg if the game can't find a new damage value. But this will be an issue if I want to drop an object on a player to deal more damage, so I may need to fix THAT later.

Changelog:

• Sub weapon animation length is now consistent.
• Player can no longer stand during crouch attack.
• Head pats no longer heal the player.
• Rats may now resume movement after falling.
• Adjustments made to player knockback when damaged.
• Streamlined system for damage performed ON enemies.
• Player hurtbox made shorter by a few pixels.

Anyway that's it for now. Don't forget to eat & sleep.