Progress update: miniboss, trade hub, and a broom rider

Hey all, back with the mid-March update. Let's dive right in.

Progress towards

Progress tracker - what work is ahead of the small test build. It might grow or shrink a little depending on circumstances.

Small - 1 day of work
Medium - 2-3 days of work
Large - 4-7 days of work

✅ LARGE: New run animation

This is basically done now. I might polish it a bit more between now and the small test release, but it won't be priority work anymore.

✅ SMALL: Finish playfighting player menu

This is done now - I might do some brushing up work, but it's not a priority anymore.

🟦 LARGE: Create a small 'trading hub' with shop, service, and quest NPCs

I've redrawn one of the shopkeepers and made her a 'bartender' - which is where you'll get upgrade cocktails and improve your playfighting moves. I've also started working on a lift here so you can travel between the various floors. What remains now is redrawing another shopkeeper into a potion selling NPC, adding the nurse somewhere plus her nursing querters, likely the Guidess NPC too, and adding more furniture / making it a bit more lively.

🟦 MEDIUM: Create a tutorial to teach movement and playfighting

I've added the Guidess on a broom following you around and helping out until you finish the tutorial. I still need iconography and to extend the tutorial a little bit so that it covers animations and playfighting.

⬜ MEDIUM: Create new Plant Walker animation

No progress on this one this time.

🟦 LARGE: Create Purple Man water mini-boss

I've worked on the tentacle puppeteer mini-boss. I've started the animation's core loop and it's about halfway there. I've done 3/5 character poses, I just have half the wall pose and the full defeat pose left now. Three boss moves are now done:

• Diving into and out of the water, making him harder to hit, plus he jumps out of the water on exit
• Spawning a liquid ball containing a tentacle that extends out from the ball towards the player
• A wave of tentacles coming out of the water, covering the whole floor

The fight itself is kind of done too - it's the first boss so it's not supposed to be super challenging, but it isn't easy either. It's also somewhat forgiving since I'm adding save altars outside boss entrances so you don't have to travel all the way back to retry. The last part of this is adding a reward, which will be unlocking a playfight move, and adding and editing more sound effects - some are already in place.

🟦 MEDIUM: Create new Purple Tentacle animation

This is about 30% done now. I've done two core loop animations for 2/4 tentacles. What remains is supering and the org sub-animations after that.

🟦 SMALL: Finish inventory and potion making systems

I did some work here and it looks better now but I don't consider it done just yet. 

⬜ MEDIUM: Make playfighting moves upgradeable

No progress on this one this time.

Otherwise

I've started working on drawing some clothes - all the normal character poses are done in that regard now, and next up is the playfight poses. The intent is to finish a full outfit, but the system does allow for more outfits to be added in the future.

I've started working on drawing higher-res player dialogue faces, for now there's only two expressions out of like 10-15? So a bit of work ahead here, but I can probably get it done in a day if I focus on it.

Changed use buttons so they're now laid out in a plus shape, and made direction keys activate them (replacing 1-4 on keyboards). This frees some buttons on controllers so they can be used for other things instead.

General improvements to playfighting, like preventing hits/damage from the same move multiple times, and adding more visual effects.

I've added prettier system messages, e.g. when you enter a new area, or when your level is too low.

And that's it for this one. Next one in about two weeks, so end of March/early April. See you then!