Howdy, Kinoko fans!

We’re officially at the end of November now, which means only one month remains until the New Year – and also until it’s been one full year since I started my daily development diary. This time next month, I’ll be able to post a retrospective on the year behind – so to mix things up, I thought I’d spent this month’s rather more brisk blog post looking forward to the month ahead and all the things I’ve got planned in the final weeks of 2023.

Firstly, though, a quick recap. Since last month’s blog post, in which I talked briefly about the basic steps I’d taken towards re-implementing enemies, I’ve put a lot more work into them. They no longer die in a single hit, as they did before. They have hitpoints now, and I can set the number of hitpoints according to the enemy type. To go along with the hitpoints I’ve also added enemy health bars. Enemies can be stunned between hits, and I even figured out Godot’s path nodes to get enemies walking around, even if all they’re doing currently is walking back and forward in simple loops.

Most importantly of all, I finally added an improved version of the raygun that Kinoko had in the Unity version. It works a lot better than it did before, even though at the moment it only fires bullets instead of rays, which is something I’ll be addressing probably in the new year now. I took the opportunity to improve the look of the raygun’s charge bar when restoring it, and I’ve even laid the groundwork for adding additional raygun modes in the future – but we’ll talk about that more some other time!

Even if it’s a bit empty at the moment, level one – from a platforming perspective – feels just about complete. You’ll see from the video above that it’s longer than it used to be in the Unity version, and you’ll maybe also notice that I don’t use Kinoko’s flying ability in this one. Although it’s definitely something we want to have in the game, I’ve disabled it for now – it’s likely that Kinoko will need to unlock that ability during the early stages of gameplay, and he won’t have it quite this early on. It’s important that the first few levels are playable without it, even if having that ability could potentially unlock access to new areas, and therefore it’s important that I develop and test them with that in mind.

We’ve now moved onto level two, which is different from the level two we had in Unity. Chelsey decided to squeeze another level in, making the old level two now level three, and designing a new level two in its place! This one’s really interesting from a development point of view, because it has a requirement for a couple of new platforming mechanics, as well as requiring Kinoko having the ability to swim, which isn’t something I’ve brought over from the Unity version yet. I’d certainly like to improve swimming this time around, since it was clunky and basic before, so that’s one thing I want to look at in December.

Another thing that’s in this new level – but which you only glimpse briefly in the video below – are the new swinging vines. There was never really a need for this sort of thing when flying was possible from the very beginning, especially with the degree of freedom which flying currently offers, but with flying now planned to be unlocked slightly later – and possibly also a little more restrictive than it is now, for balancing reasons – we’ve found a use for a few new ways of getting around the levels. I haven’t begun to implement these yet, but I hope to try and do so before the end of the year.

Something that you will see in the video below is one of our new bouncy mushrooms. These are new objects that Kinoko can jump on to receive a boost in a specific direction, enabling him to completely clear large objects that he’d never be able to overcome by jumping. I haven’t got this feeling completely perfect yet, but I’m getting there. This mechanic won’t be limited to mushrooms – it’s designed to be reusable – so we’ll be thinking about how we can use this particular platforming mechanic, and others like it, in our other worlds too. I hope I can refine this facility and get it feeling just the way I want it this month too.

One other new thing you might notice in both of the videos above is the new audio settings panel, beneath the starsprites on the HUD. This is just a temporary thing I’ve created for myself to use during development – this way the in-game music doesn’t interfere with my music on Spotify when I’m playtesting! – but it actually works really nicely and it’s something I could move into an actual in-game menu quite easily. It isn’t necessarily something the game requires right now, but if I have spare time this December and nothing better to do then I might look into implementing that, maybe.

So that about sums up what I’ve got planned for what little remains of 2023. I’ve got a lot on at work with deadlines that feel impossible over there(!), so I’m trying to take it fairly easy whilst also being realistic here what I’m trying to achieve on this end. I think if I can get the first two levels feeling great to explore, even if they’re lacking in enemies or anything particularly exciting to do, that’ll be a pretty solid bookend to 2023 and a great launching point for all the great stuff we’re going to do in 2024!

As I said earlier on in this blog post, I’ll do one more blog post later in December taking a complete look back at 2023 and all the work we’ve done for Kinoko and the Cult of Galaxy, both on the game and otherwise. It’s been a really eventful year in all sorts of ways, and of course one of my ‘new year’s resolution’ things for 2023 was to keep a diary of how I spent every day of the year, which I have so far done every single day. Even if there were a tiny handful of days (currently just five) when I didn’t work on anything, due to taking trips or organising our Discord ‘secret Santa’ event, I’ll still have plenty to look back on and reference (and as for Chelsey, her body of work speaks for itself as always).

Just before I wrap this one up, and in case you didn’t already know, the Bouncy Mushrooms track produced for our game by Ember/Strymes49 is now available in full for listening over on YouTube, accompanied by the brand new, official soundtrack cover by Chelsey. Enjoy!