New enemies + steam valves (that don't kill you) (Patreon)

Hello! Of the past couple years for me this has been the month filled with the most stress and busy work. Creative work has been a little hard. Still, the work I put into the game's AI system is paying off by making it joyous and easy to add new enemies to Lethal Company. So there's been a healthy amount of progress despite the distractions. This is the strategy I learned around the time I made The Upturned: spend the first half of development preparing luxurious systems to make the second half as easy as possible.

I've finished coding the the enemy I teased in the last post. Its only problem right now is that it's easy to kite around because it's so clumsy--so I might have to make it bigger (but fitting through doors will become an issue). It's very simple and acted as a stepping stone to the next enemy I wanted to make.

I already modelled, rigged, and animated the next enemy and am 90% finished with coding it. I've called it the "hoarder bug." It's the most complex and nuanced AI in the game so far, due to the possible interactions it can have with players. (There may be some influence from Rain World's scavengers, though it's not quite as deep as that.) It's turned out to be kind of cute? I think that's partly due to its behavior and its animations being so expressive.

I have already planned what the NEXT next enemy in the game will do and am very interested to see how the concept works. Its AI will be simple, but its animations and visuals will be the main unique characteristic to set it apart.

On top of all this I added in steam valves that can leak and fill up the hallways with steam until you turn them off. It's using localized "volumetric" fog, so it looks really natural. For this and other reasons, the factory has become a lot more stress-inducing. I've only had one slight encounter with an enemy while in the steam, so I'm excited to see it come into play while testing it more. (I should also make the steam condense on your helmet, but that's for later.)