0.2 Build

Hey there, everyone! Hope y'all doing fine!

Update 0.2 has come to this prototype, featuring new stuff such as new art and movement! In this Devlog, I'll list all the changes made, bugs, goals, and milestones.

Art:

• New map:

- I would like to welcome you, to "The Sanctuary" (Will make it look more like a sanctuary in the next updates). You will be quite familiar with this initial zone since we will be doing most of the playtesting here. I'll be implementing all of the core gameplay elements here before I start to develop the rest of the world.

• New custom-made tilemap assets, based on the ones made by Buch (https://opengameart.org/content/a-platformer-in-the-forest), featuring:

- Overall modifications to the already existing tiles, with visual enhancements, more variety(such as more water tiles, grass and chests) and you are now able to make floating platforms,

*NEW STUFF*

- Added wood and stone bridges;

- Added wood and stone lamps;

- Added standard stone graves, with or without grass;

- Added wood and stone cross-shaped graves, with or without grass;

- Added stone signs variation;

- Added stone fences variation;

- Added stone chests variation;

- Added a new barrel model;

- Added more variation to grass tiles;

- Added more variation to water tiles;

- Remade background grass tiles.

*REMOVED BACKGROUND TREE TILES*

• New art for the slime (Mr. Pea) and new art and visual effects for the fairy (Ms. Blue)

*For the technical nerds*

- Instead of making Ms. Blue's animation frame by frame, I chose another approach, which was character rigging. 

- Essentially creating bones on the individual parts of the character and animating them accordingly. You can learn to do this by following this tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1JcSp3lYiY&t=986s

• New cursor icon:

"Yay!"

- It is a bit too small in-game, will fix that in the next update.

And that's it for the art!

Movement:

- This update, we will be featuring major improvements to the movement system, making it way more fluid, intuitive, and well-built. 

*For the technical nerds*

- 3 scripts are needed to put this character controller together: "Character Controller", "Animations" and "Extras".

These were made based on Tarodev's Ultimate 2D Platformer Controller.

You can know more about this system by following these links:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sWTzMsmdx8

https://github.com/Matthew-J-Spencer/Ultimate-2D-Controller

REJECT GRAVITY, RETURN TO... F*KING SIMULATION.

- We can achieve this type of movement system by simulating both the gravity itself and the collision, as well as making the actual movement. So our player character doesn't have nor a Rigidbody2D, nor a Collider2D.  There's a lot more technical stuff related to the actual movement and control, but Tarodev himself can explain that better in his video. I highly recommend his channel, since he is both a great developer and a huge inspiration;

- The "Extras" script was made to check for the player input and other stuff.  We have an "IPlayerController" public interface that is referenced on both "Character Controller" and "Animations" and is used to check, for example, if the player jumped, moved left or right, movement speed, falling speed, etc. This script is absolutely needed.

- A few tweaks in Ms. Blue follow speed were made so she can keep up with the player.

• Known bugs:

- There is currently an issue with the simulated collider on the player character and the colliders on the tilemaps, where you can literally clip through the map if you fall diagonally into the edges. 

- It seems that this is related to framerate too. Something similar happens to the projectiles as well.

*For the Technical nerds*

- The projectile's colliders are set as "Trigger". On the bullet script, we have a method called "OnTriggerEnter2D", and a Destroy() inside it. So essentially we are telling the bullet projectiles to stop existing whenever they hit any collider.

• Goals:

*COMING NEXT*

- Next update I will be making the UI for the game, with main and pause menus (maybe configuration as well) and a health bar, some interactables such as chests, coins and health points, as well as a basic version of combat. 

• Milestones:

- I want to have all the core systems of the game by the update 0.5, all of them in a good and rather polished state and a good gameplay loop. From 0.6 to 0.9, I want to focus on world-building and visual elements, soundtracks, sound effects, and that stuff. 1.0 will mark the official release of the title, and this update will be focused on polishing and bug fixing.

Slime's Tale will be released only here for now. Maybe on other platforms with an increased level of polish, more content and other stuff.

-

I will be making a devlog video about Slime's Tale shortly and I will post it on my youtube channel, be sure to check it out!

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCywwhZgX-CjStv1uAHTl69Q

Thanks a lot and have a wonderful day!