Devlog 6

Welcome to our 6th devlog! Like the previous weeks, we’ll go over the new changes since last time, organized by discipline:

Level Design:

A point of feedback we received was that our tutorial was easy to miss, and felt a bit unfocused. As such, we’ve overhauled it to be a short starting sequence in a dungeon that you can’t skip.

The first two barriers force you to learn flapping to get over and across them, which will cause you to fly into your first few blood drops and teach you how they work. After these barriers, there’s a hole in the roof that you can only fly through by turning upwards and flapping, ensuring that you learn rotational movements as well. After this you’re given a clear overhead view of the game world, including the first checkpoint, both the zones, and the castle.

Programming:

Some work has been done on the camera. For starters, you can now press down on the right stick/middle mouse button on keyboard to lock it directly behind D. This acts as an option for players who don’t want to manually control the camera while they’re already busy flapping and turning. The camera can be toggled between this locked version and the default freelook one at will.

We’ve also begun implementing a system that hides objects that come between D and the camera, making sure that they’re always visible so the player better knows where they are. For example in the image below, the barrier underneath the bat is hidden due to the camera covering it.

Additionally, based on the recent playtest feedback we’ve received, many new changes were made to the flight mechanic. Those changes are:

1. Single-wing flap for turning.
2. Alternating flaps to move forward and ascend — the longer you keep alternating, the faster you go.
3. Tap on both wings at the same time to rise vertically.
4. Holding both wings to hover in current position.
5. No flapping leads to natural falling, with descent speed gradually increasing over time.
6. Left-stick rotation for optional control.

And finally, we added placeholder text prompts that help teach the flight mechanic and its rhythm:

It’s worth noting that this feature is still early and will be improved in the next few weeks.

Art:

A new version for the final comic panel was made that includes more details for the bat; in order to make him easier to identify. Additionally, several concept arts were created to brainstorm the magic sigil feature, which will stop the player if they fly up too high in the sky.

Animation:

Based on the recent feedback, the idle animation was modified to make it more clear when the bat is not flying. This was done by lowering the wings when the bat lands on the ground.

Audio:

2 sounds were made for menu navigation and button press, and a large number of sounds were recorded for when the bat lands on the different surfaces such as grass and rock. The menu sounds have been implemented and are included in the latest build, but the surface sounds will be there for our next submission.

Next Steps:

As we’re reaching the Beta version, there are many improvements we are planning to make in the next few weeks. But the most important of them are making objects fade around the camera rather than disappearing them entirely, implementing the magic sigil, and changing the areas’ shapes to half ovals. Needless to say that apart from these big main changes, there are numerous minor features and bug fixes that we’ll be working on.

As the development is reaching to its end, we’re excited that the game is improving, and can’t wait to share the final version with you.

Thanks for reading!