Update 05-20-24

it's been a couple weeks since the last demo. i took a vacation and have been looking into some refinements with the controls, ui, and general systems. here's some highlights:

completion screen

there's a new completion screen that scores you based on time taken, fire/enemies cleared, and damage taken. this will give the levels a bit of replayability and encourage more competition.

i also significantly reduced the difficulty to compensate for a more open ended scoring system. mild gives you 12 minutes and 10 lives, medium gives 8 minutes and 8 lives, spicy gives 4 minutes and 6 lives, and extra spicy retains its 2 minute time limit.

new hud

i reworked the major hud elements. the portrait changes as callie takes damage to make it more useful to read for immediate info, and the water meter now flashes when fully charged and bubbles when shooting/charging, which makes timing fully charged shots a little easier.

level 2

level 2 is complete! it'll be in the next demo. i wanted to include some of the mechanics i left out of the first level, such as buttons and stairs, to make it stand out from the first. i also tried to stretch the tileset a little. here's a screenshot from the roof area:

combat revamp

kicking stunned enemies has always been a mechanic but wasn't well highlighted in the tutorial and was not as useful as just using the hose. universally, player experience was that it was jank, so it's been overhauled. kicking enemies now has an animation, applies some physics properties to the target (allowing them to press buttons and slam into other enemies), and carries over more momentum, making it a great option to deal with enemies in tight spaces.

i want to update the section of the tutorial that introduces enemies to also go over kicking so that it's clear this is an important mechanic. its current version was a bit rushed and needs some adjustments, such as not overlapping the dialog box with the first fuegato you see.

bug fixes

i've been squashing hella bugs. here they are in no particular order

• fixed getting stuck on walls and poles after walking off a ledge without jumping, for real this time
• fixed a comparison with the idle timer that caused callie to bark non-stop instead of barking in short bursts
• fixed facing the wrong direction when shooting horizontally while leaning on a pole
• fixed ledge grabs testing for an unoccupied space in the wrong location, which made ledge grabbing either always or never succeed based on the room you were standing in
• fixed being able to fly by jumping on an enemy with no x velocity
• fixed somersaulting uncontrollably up stairs or ramps if you landed on one from a backflip with a jump arc tangential to the slope
• fixed restarting a level from the pause menu loading an empty scene if the current level wasn't already cached
• (hopefully) fixed shader precaching being deferred until the shaders are used on-screen, leading to huge slowdown the first time fire was loaded
• fixed fire spawners entering an invalid state if you leave the room while fires are being put out.

other changes

• firehose shots now fully extend to their maximum range regardless of how long they're held.
• added safety biscuits. picking one up restores 2 lives. these do not appear on extra spicy.
• enemy spawns are now determined by difficulty. easier difficulty settings spawn fewer enemies and more safety biscuits, harder difficulties spawn more enemies and fewer safety biscuits.
• levels now have a short intro screen to give players a cognitive break when restarting
• minor adjustments to layout and enemy placement in level 1 to prevent cheap shots from unclear falling patterns

next demo checklist

here's the things i want to do before the next public build:

• update enemy tutorial to better explain kicking and other strategies for dealing with enemies
• update camera pans between rooms to use procedural, axis-aligned tweens instead of the default smoothing
• possibly add a second enemy and do new enemy sprites (that's a lot of work :( )
• bind/controls screen
• add wraparound to controls in the options menu