Arbiter - Monthly Recap - February 2022 (Patreon)

GREETINGS YE TARNISHED! PLEASE KNOW THAT THROUGHOUT ALL OF THE WORK IN THIS UPDATE (AND EVEN WHILE WRITING IT) I WOULD MUCH RATHER BE SPENDING MY TIME VANQUISHING SHARDBEARERS AND EXPLORING THE GREAT REALM OF LIMGRAVE, HOWEVER, SUCH A QUEST REQUIRES SUSTENANCE AND SUSTENANCE CAN ONLY BE GAINED THROUGH THRIVING IN ONE'S DAY TO DAY LIFE, SO ALAS, HERE WE ARE. 

Anyways, I spent this month implementing most of Scarlet-Ashe's core gameplay! As I've mentioned before, this form is focused on ranged attacks and maintaining distance, and serves as a good option for players looking to make certain encounters a little bit easier.

The first thing I started with was her movement mechanics, as this form has some of the most diverse options when it comes to traversing the environment. In particular, I implemented her glide and super jump near the end of last month, which allow her to move around freely and easily.

One of the core focuses of this form is on floatiness. Floatiness generally represents the amount of airborne lag a character has as well as the delay between your input and when the character actually moves. Scarlet is very floaty, making it feel more like you're fluently guiding her as she flies around rather than tightly controlling her like with Wolf. 

In order to maintain this feeling, Scarlet can perform a lot of her basic attacks and abilities while moving. This gives her a really nice feeling of fluidity as she repositions and attacks at the same time, which feeds well into her gameplay of maintaining distance.

In order to achieve this however, I had to rewrite how some of the movement systems in Arbiter work. Before, a character's rotation and movement direction were joined at the hip, but now they can manipulate both independently. I really should have done this originally but it's one of those things you don't really think about until you have to. But hey, it works now!

With the movement changes implemented, I started working on her basic attacks. Scarlet's basic attacks are different from the other forms as they change contextually based on the distance between you and your target. At long range, she'll strike different poses as she fires energy blasts that track enemies (but don't hit-stun them). At close range, she'll telekinetically swing her sword around, swiftly hitting all enemies in front of her and knocking them away. 

I also incorporated her counter action, which creates a clone made of energy in her place as she dodges backwards. The clone is stationary, but will both attack any enemies that enter its vicinity, and deflect any projectiles that touch it. Clones will stay active for a few seconds, but Scarlet can only have one clone active at any given time.

Lastly, I started working on Scarlet's special attack. I'm still in the middle of working on it, but this attack will lock onto all nearby enemies and spend energy to fire a volley of tracking projectiles. These projectiles are much stronger than her normal basic attacks however, hence the energy cost. The expected gameplay loop is to gain distance and energy with her melee combo, deal consistent light damage with her ranged combo, and deal powerful damage with her special attack, weaving in abilities however you please. 

As a last little note, I recently did an interview for Humble's Black Game Developer Fund! I talk a bit about what inspired Arbiter and how I found myself working as an indie developer. Give it a read here if you're interested! 

Anyways, that wraps up this month! I've been really enjoying working on Scarlet and I keep catching myself just spamming her combos over and over again because of how fluent she ended up playing. Over the next few weeks I'll be getting started on her ability variants and finalizing her VFX, so we should be wrapped up within the next month or so! 

Thanks again for your support everyone!

Cheers,
Jordy