Long time no see! What was it, 3 months, I think? I’ll probably just stop counting time between entries, it’s likely it’ll just end up becoming an unnecessary source of stress. I’ve dedicated this entire time almost entirely to finishing up and structuring the entire first episode of the game, which is as far as the public demo will go.

Up until now, I had spent all my time creating all the necessary tools and systems to build the game. When you build a house, you don’t start with the roof, right? Most of the content I had so far (scenarios, enemies, etc.) has now been properly structured and organized into episode 1. So, let’s break it down.

A combat simulation in order to test Minerva’s functionalities after she is activated in the game's prologue, episode 1 acts as an introductory scenario to the game’s main elements, featuring relatively simple enemies and mechanics, divided into 3 different stages.

1-1:  OUTER SIMULATION

The very first stage, Minerva manifests in the outer reaches of the simulated virtual space, an open area surrounded by an endless landscape of towering spires and strange shapes. Most of the content shown in previous entries has been integrated into this stage.

FEATURES

The outer simulation is, for the most part, quite tame. Floating platforms, ledges, and open areas with straightforward enemies make up the bulk of this stage, specifically focused on basic parkour and combat, to allow the player to get used to the controls before facing the challenges ahead.

ENEMIES

- Simulant Walker:  We’ve seen this one before, haven’t we? Nothing too fancy, they are as dumb as they probably look, since they do nothing but walk forward, hoping to somehow stumble upon something they can hurt.

They inflict damage upon contact, and they go down with a single melee swipe (which is the only thing that hurts them, coincidentally).

- Simulant Eye:  Another familiar face. These pests tend to rush into the screen from different directions, and they hover in place for a moment before they start switching positions and shooting explosive bullets at the player. They usually attempt to predict the player’s movement before shooting, but rapid movements can easily make them aim erratically.

The shield can block their attacks, and both the laser and melee swipes can bring them down fairly easily.

1-2:  INNER SIMULATION

After crossing the open landscape, Minerva enters a huge indoors complex, designed to test her efficiency in close-quarters combat.

FEATURES

The inner simulation features an indoors tileset, and is full of narrow corridors and crawlspaces, with the occasional open room. It also starts featuring traps and interactable elements.

ENEMIES

In this stage, the enemies from stage 1-1 will still be encountered, along with 2 new enemies:

- Simulant Watcher:  A turret-type enemy, immobile and harmless until the player gets close enough, when It shoots up a stream of energy in an attempt to stop the intruder. They are commonly found as traps or ambushes in ledges and platforms.

Its attack can be avoided by double-jumping over it. If such a thing isn’t possible, then it needs to be dealt with, they go down with a single melee strike.

- Simulant Needle: A new type of flying enemy, they float for a while in the right side of the screen, before shooting a vertical laser into the ground, and sweeping the entire screen with it.

The shield can cover the player from the laser, otherwise they are quite fragile and go down easily with any kind of attack. As an added note, the laser detects the colliders of the environment, so any kind of obstacle or crawlspace will serve as effective cover.

INTERACTABLES

- Barriers:  We’ve actually discussed these things in the previous entry, but I’ll mention them again here for the sake of consistency. They are deadly obstacles that block certain passages. Sometimes there’s alternate routes, but in many cases, they need to be disabled, by destroying fuses on the walls.

If the player can’t manage to open up the barrier in time, they will die, and the shield won’t work with these, so it’s always a good idea to not ignore bright, giant, glowing buttons on the walls.

- Force Platforms:  These objects will immediately trigger upon contact with Minerva, launching her high into the air. Think of it as a super-jump device.

Blue platforms will always lead to new passageways, high platforms with collectibles, etc. However, red platforms will splatter your circuits against the ceiling with overwhelming force you can’t possibly counter, and nobody wants that, right?

The platforms work with the exact same principle as the barriers, and they are built with the same elements, (as described in the previous entry about interactables), they trigger upon physical contact, and they forcibly override the jump controls of the player.

1-3:  CORE SIMULATION

The last stage of episode 1, it becomes the last challenge in Minerva’s training, where she is expected to locate and bring down a powerful priority target, to test her effectiveness in combat against critical threats.

This stage is a hybrid combination of the 2 previous stages, featuring chunks from both tilesets that seamlessly connect with each other, as well as hybrid tiles with features from both tilesets simultaneously.

The connection between differing tilesets is achieved by inserting special "switch chunks", thus allowing for seamless transition between areas.

So far, the level generator would randomly choose chunks to spawn, and insert small "connector chunks" to ensure the seamless connection between them (which is necessary, since each chunk has different entry and exit heights, and they wouldn't otherwise connect). When chunks from an entirely different tileset are generated, the connection mechanism takes it into account as well, choosing the correct switch chunk, and generating it in place before attempting to place the new main chunk.

ENEMIES

All enemies from stages 1-1 and 1-2 show up in this stage, but there's one last addition to the roster:

- Simulant Matrix:  The first enemy from an entirely new category of enemies, called “background enemies”. This massive floating vessel slowly marches across the screen, and it spawns several Simulant Eyes before eventually disappearing on the other side of the screen.

They are noticeably tougher than the other enemies of the stage, and they can only be hurt with the laser attack (since they are so far away in the distance, they can’t be reached by melee).

All enemies in this new background category spawn in an entirely different layer of the game, unreachable by melee attacks. Therefore, only laser attacks can be used against them. They will typically be huge, hulking enemies, more dangerous than average, although there will most likely be some variations to this rule along the way.

- ???????? ??????: 

Yes, yes, I’m just trying to be mysterious here for no reason, I just thought I could add a bit of flavor to this part. I was really hyped up when I made this guy, so I just felt like hyping him a little bit as well. But the truth is, this guy has way more beef than all the others before, so let’s talk about him in more detail, shall we?

I mentioned several times in previous entries that I’d be including a boss, somewhere in this endeavor, so here it is. A video can probably give you a better first impression of our friend here, so check it out if you feel like it:

I don't know for sure if this is just my own personal experience, but I've always been a little bit fascinated by boss fights, ever since I was a kid. The feeling of getting through the first stages of a game, and suddenly stumbling upon a gigantic oponent that gets in your way, it's a thrill that never got old for me. So indeed, I was quite excited to get this big boy ready to go!

Let’s break down how it works first. A boss encounter is, essentially, a cutscene. There’s barely any difference if we get technical about it, it’s just a cutscene where the player can still move around, and the trigger to end it is tied to a specific enemy (the boss itself).

Once the player reaches the boss chunk, an event is triggered, trapping the player in an endless loop, which only breaks if the player dies, or if the boss dies. Now, the boss itself has a lot more going on, compared to previous enemies. Up until now, enemies just moved around with simple movement scripts, and performed simple actions when instructed to (spawning a projectile, enabling a laser, etc.). This one is actually a static enemy, it doesn’t move at all, but the behavior script deviates quite a lot from the others. However, I guess there’s just some things I simply can’t pull off with parameters and simple customization.

So, the Simulant Origin, as the boss is called, is surrounded by 4 Simulant Drones. These things are actually indestructible, but they can be temporarily disabled by the player. The bottom ones are vulnerable to melee, the top ones are vulnerable to ranged attacks (and they are immune to the alternate option respectively, they’ll just bring up a shield). The drones constantly move around set positions, and alternate between shooting lasers at the player, and launching mortars that fall in random positions below them, dealing area damage.

The boss itself is protected by a shell, that can be forced open with the laser. This will reveal the vulnerable core of the entity, but it’ll also make it start sweeping the screen with a giant laser. This attack is deadly. It can actually be survived for a moment at full health in the easiest difficulty setting, but it’s extremely lethal in any other circumstance. After a while, the shell closes back and regenerates, and it needs to be forced open again.

Obviously, the boss gets trickier as difficulty increases, attacks become faster, more unpredictable and randomized, the boss itself becomes sturdier, and its attacks more damaging.

BOSS UI

During a boss fight, a special health bar UI will show up somewhere on the screen. In this case, it comes down from the top, but that won’t always be the case.

The health bar is stylized to match the boss design and its animations. This will be a running theme with the following bosses, their health bars will have designs that match their appearances, and will animate accordingly as the boss cycles through its different phases.

I could have just made a simple health bar, but I fancied the concept and it adds flavor, so why not?

You might have also noticed how the laser cooldown bar is gone during the fight. This is not a mistake, but part of a special mechanic that takes place in these big fights:

OVERDRIVE MODE

All entities in the game world are capable of much more than what they usually do, their technology allows for much more impressive feats, but they remain suppressed and under control at all times, unless an emergency arises. This kind of critical threat qualifies as an emergency, which prompts Minerva to enter Overdrive Mode until the fight is over.

While Overdrive Mode is active, Minerva moves slightly faster, the laser never overheats, and the shield is twice as sturdy than usual, able to tank several hits before going down.

This is a way to balance the fight a bit in favor of the player during these tricky encounters, as well as to stay consistent with the lore of the game.

Additionally, during Overdrive Mode, the combo counter freezes completely, allowing the player to effectively full-combo the entire stage, should they manage to get through the boss unscathed.

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I’m really excited to see some real content finally taking shape! It’s been tricky to find a proper way to organize all of these tasks. There’s just so many things involved, you might have all the ideas clear in your mind, and you don’t think much of it until you actually get to it and problems start showing up all over the place. I’ve been using a literal notebook to keep track of everything, and sometimes I feel like a caveman, when so many other tools are available. But hey, sometimes a bit of pen and paper does the job just right!

One way or another, I decided to start using Trello to keep a better sight of what needs to be done, and to keep all tasks in one place instead of all over the place. Progress, to-do lists, bugs, etc. I’m just putting everything in there and trying to keep it as orderly as possible. I’ll leave the link here, just in case it springs anyone’s curiosity:

https://trello.com/b/FPvJZPpM/cardinal-nexus

Do keep in mind, it’s probably looking barren right now, and I guess that’s to be expected, since I’ve never used this thing before, I don’t think I even know what I’m doing. But I hope I can keep my ideas in better order with this!

Also, I have to say, everything I’ve done until now is still lacking polish and improvement. I’m very aware that nothing can ever be perfect, and I’ll always keep seeing things to improve no matter how hard I try, I need to find a balance. And I don’t think that’s something I can realistically do on my own. Other people will see things I don’t see. Other people will point out mistakes that don't feel like mistakes to me.

I think it’s about time the public demo comes out so I can get some very, very necessary feedback. The next devlog entry is almost guaranteed to come along with the demo release. I’ll have to fix as many remaining bugs as I can by then, add the last couple of features and balance changes I want to include, and take care of some additional stuff, and then it’ll be all ready to go.

So, stay tuned for future updates if I managed to pick your interest! Any feedback, no matter how trivial, will be greatly appreciated!

Thank you for reading!

Full Threaded Games, out.