This week I've wrapped up work on the content for Exoloper's launch. That means all the art, sound effects, weapons, items utilities, pilotable Exos, ai, vehicles and so much more is now in-place. Will it be tweaked? Yeah, probably, is it final? I'd say so! Is the game done? Noooooooo.
I implemented all the new enemy types for the Forest Campaign, and in doing so, added units that use Utilities (such as active camo or smoke launchers). This makes combats way more dynamic, and it feels great. You'll hate being snuck up on by sword wielding Exos! I also added some new toys to play with, including Heavy Autocannons that just shred through light and medium armour.
I've also completed work on getting the forest campaign layer up and running as well. It's not quite balanced, and not quite where I want it to be, but I want it out there for now, so feel free to take a swing at that, though beware it's more dangerous than the industrial campaign.
As an aside, there's been a few moments recently where I've really appreciated the architecture I've laid down for Exoloper. I'm 99% sure it's all going to come and bite me in the bum in the future, but right now, it works great.
The general concept is that I've got dual event emitting systems happening, one for the game's global state, and one on a per unit basis. The global state handles most of everything, from changing the games state from menu to campaign to combat, and the local states handle the microcosm that is each unit. For instance, when the player fires their gun, global input state emits a message saying the player has requested to fire a weapon, the player unit input controller listens to that message, and then fires an internal message to the unit, with information on what weapon group was requested, and the players current target. That information is then received by the weapons various systems (audio, animation, bullet spawning, etc) and launches the bullet. On collision that bullet then transfers it's information to both the component it collided with and it's parent unit, resulting in feedback animations, damage to internal systems, effects and more.
This seemingly complex set of overlapping systems was built small to start with, initially just covering projectiles and damge, (as seeen in the first gif below) but has blossomed out to accomodate pretty much any system I might think of (seen in the concept of stealth, ai use of utilites and vision modes, demonstrated in the second gif below.)
Oh yeah I also got Exo paint schemes back up and running with the new models and it's great. I'm holding back the temptation to go even further on this as it could quickly delay the project significantly.
The next phase of the development will be bugfixing and balancing. The game is all sorts of out of balance, some things are overpowered, others are barely useful, so its all about reining that in a bit, whilst cleaning up its rough edges.