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Weekly Roundup - 10/07/2023 - We started the fire


Art Packs

Sketch Packs

Patreon Builds

Hi everyone!

I wrote the roundup last week but then forgot to publish it! Life was pretty busy and hectic. So here is last week’s round up and this week’s roundup in one big juicy post! Enjoy! ^w^

New Environment Art

Statues with PP

I made a male statue to go along with the other one we had to have a bit more variety.

Braziers & Torches

I animated some braziers and torches for the revamped Temple of Trials.

I tried out a technique I saw on Twitter a while ago and I thought was pretty cool.

You start out with outlining the simple shape of the finished flame. Then you simply animate alternating circles moving up from the bottom and along the guides you sketched in.

You can picture the circles as cutouts of the base shape. The first step looks something like this:

And filled out:

Once you’re happy with the base animation, you can start adding details like little sparks flying away and giving some body to the flame by introducing more colors:

Lastly you finish rendering the flame. I also added some details to the brazier itself:

I repeated the same process for a smaller brazier and torches as well!

Crumbling Platform

We’re still using graphics from my old tileset for the crumbling platforms so I made a fun new one to replace it finally.

Still needs some dust particles to round it off but it looks much better than the old stuff!

Temple Doors

Here’s various concepts I came up with for the Temple of Trials and the upcoming Cisterns area:

Various Enemy Fixes & Improvements

Since we started the game, we learned a lot about making enemies more fun and engaging. Some of the old enemies still had a lot of issues and jank or weren’t really living up to the vision we had in mind when we came up with them. Null did pass over all the old enemies and tried out a bunch of new ideas. Here’s a little preview of some of the changes we did:

Explodo Flowers

The exploding flowers are supposed to be the source material for the pellets and bombs the kobolds use. Since Kincaid can deflect them, we wanted to introduce a similar mechanic to these flowers to make them more consistent.

Now, if you hit them and cause them to explode, they do damage to enemies.

Also, no matter how they got triggered, an explosion can now trigger a chain reaction if there are other flowers around:

We're still debating on having a version that can regrow, or a version that can be launched like a golf ball if you smack it with a melee attack.

Saber-tooth Tigers

The tigers felt way too slow and tanky to be taken seriously as a ferocious hunter, so we changed pretty much everything about them. Now they're way faster, have a better vision cone, and can actually jump up ledges and follow Kincaid.

We also reintroduced their "ambushes" that were previously cut because of the limited view range of the player in the old resolution. Now that the player can see a lot more of the level, we gave it another shot and now it's actually quite fun.

Gecko

Another enemy that got a complete makeover is the gecko. Previously the enemy was pretty boring and useless which is apparent with how underutilized she is in the current levels.

The gecko as a character is meant to be a thief and there is going to be a little optional side-quest about her later on.

The new gecko will try to anticipate good hiding spots and frequently change positions, trying to lurk near where the player might come along.

We also gave her a much longer tongue (attack reach).

And instead of pulling the player instantly to her position, she now drags Kincaid, slowly reeling her in. The player has a chance to break out by smacking her last second or blasting her face with a shot.

Wall Crawlers

First of all, you can now kill these little annoying things. Secondly, they were the first enemy we made, back when Null was very new to GameMaker. So they were always super janky and didn't properly work on all situations. We rewrote them and now they behave like a proper cliche Metroidvania wall crawler. Nothing super exciting here, just what you'd expect! :D

Kobold Flappers

These were also changed completely. The old nose-dive was poorly telegraphed and just went down at 45° angles. Now the flapper will try to home in on you on their way down. We also removed the type that flies back up. All flappers will now land and become a ground-based kobold.

The player can also kite the flappers into the wall and causing them to crash!

Null also made a version of a bomber that carries a slime. Unlike the regular bombers that have unlimited bombs, the slime flapper only has that one slime and he becomes a regular, nose-diving flapper after dropping his gooey pay load.

Wolf

The wolf fight was another one we made very early on. Even the current version of the fight has some bugs and inconsistencies compared to the newer enemies. We rewrote the wolf fight while keeping the original spirit of it in mind. Overall the fight is a lot more fun and balanced now.

Instead of in-game footage, for this one we wanted to share how planning the internal workings of an enemy usually looks like for us:

With more complex enemies, we often make charts like this to show the different states an enemy can be in and the rules for transitioning between those states.

Most of the time what we end up with on the screen still differs from these concepts but they're a great help for communicating design ideas and figuring out how the different attacks and phases might fit together.

Miscellaneous other changes

We also made a bunch of smaller other changes, like improving the signaling of attacks of certain enemies, tweaking hit- and hurtboxes, timings, and vision ranges.

Until next week! Cookie & Bunny

Overall Status Report

Upcoming Build Tasks

  • New Lewd Animation
  • New Levels
  • Polish and QoL Pass
  • Level Design
  • Secret Content

Long-term Projects

  • Soundtrack: New Soundtrack Additions
  • Haven: Working on backgrounds and props

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Comments

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Awesome advances and upgrades!

that is a gorgeous fire

(+1)

Really enjoyed this devlog. The flame trick is quite clever.