New features, and additions for the upcoming v0.4.x update. (Patreon)

Heyo everyone! This week was dedicated to some of the new features along with some experimentation and troubleshooting with the WebGL build for the game's public demo that will come soon. I'll dive a bit in to it during the update. Let's get in to it!

First day was actually pretty simple. I implemented the Merchant's (Who I will now refer to as Tanya) Passive, and Active abilities.

-Passive: Resourceful

This is a simple one. Tanya will give 25% more credits upon the completion of a level. (This will not increase the actual score that you acquire, only the credits received).

-Active: Barrier

Tanya will provide a barrier around the player. While active the player is completely impervious to every damage type (Even obstacles. This means you can actively stay in obstacles while it is up) . The barrier will also deal severe damage to any enemies who come in contact with it. (This is more of a small perk, as the radius is rather small to be used in an offensive manner)

Another small change I did was something I found important, but might seem a bit strange, and is a bit technical:

The way the player's laser aim works is that it will read if any Enemies are in your close green square. It will prioritize anything in there, and snap shots onto them. If there are no enemies, then it will read if any enemies, OR obstacles are in your far reticle. The reason lasers snap onto obstacles is to give the players a proper estimation on their aim at varying ranges. (Similar calculations are run in some FPS games for projectile type shots) In this game it is almost critical, as the source of your shots are are all over the places (as you move a lot). That being said, if there are NO obstacles, or enemies in either reticle, then it will shoot your laser to whatever point is 125 units away from the player. (basically the almost the longest relevant distance in this game.) This is all important to give the player a strong idea of where they are aiming even through they are not seeing through the source of the projectiles (Think hip firing a gun rather than aiming down the sights). There was an exception however. This was the Wave shot. Considering the Wave shot pierces through obstacles, it actually has a fundamental reason to NOT snap on obstructing obstacles. In some instances of this game there are enemies that are behind obstacles, and the snapping would completely butcher your ability to effectively shoot them.

TLDR; Wave shot's aim, specifically, will not snap onto obstacles, to help with aiming. They will be designed with the player wanting to shoot through objects in mind. 

(Yes you can technically shoot the guy that swims under the pass... though I doubt you could actually do enough damage to kill it.)

ANYWAYS.. that was kinda long winded for such a small change, but some people might find it interesting.. i dunno.. lol

Next was actually making Credits properly save, and adding a base for a Shop System

At the moment the only options are Pin-ups and Upgrades. There may be a couple other categories depending on how things progress.

Next was actually something that I just wanted to make a bit of ground on while I had the chance.

I finished breaking up Aether's art, and meshed it all. I also set up come control parameters for sliders.

There are a few other things I did up on this end, but there is still a good amount to do before I put these functions in (So they still may not appear for a while).

Now in the next day, wheeling back to the shop, at the moment the only upgrade available will be a new... mechanic?... It's an upgrade...: 

Barrel Roll Mk2

This section will likely also include other defence types, or weapon types in the future.

Barrel Roll Mk. 2, as you may have read in the image: all deflected lasers will now be directed at nearby enemies. 

While in many places it's a small perk, in other places it is incredibly powerful

Frustratingly, a whole day got consumed this week. I spent a whole day troubleshooting the WebGL (WebGL is essentially the browser build to be used for the public demo) build. There is an issue with the WebGL version where the game will have lag spikes at certain intervals. I did extensive research onto the issues shown via the profiler. Unfortunately I couldn't find a reliable solution. The issue is that apparently WebGL struggles to render specific shaders. I figured they were due to some of my custom shaders, but they were not. After much trial and error I found the biggest culprits were when a Unity shader included any Emission maps, and when a new terrain plane came into camera view for the first time. This is only a spike, as it's only when these things are first rendered. I was thankful to finally find an actual answer however the solution will be a bit of a doozy, as I will either need to remove emission from anything that has it, or do some "work around" methods to load these shaders at the start of the level. (No, apparently preloading these shaders via script won't work.. it's only when they actively rendered for the camera. Something to do with how the shaders are applied to geometry from what I understand.)

While the WebGL is still fairly playable with these lag spikes, I want to minimize this where I can. I did some patching, but there are still a few more areas I need to flesh out for this.

Alright.. that covers the brunt of this week. Next week is going to be focused on the boss.

Thanks again everyone! I'll catch you all next Friday with a breakdown on the boss!

-Regulus