A quick update.

I am working on the "Beneath" chapter and approaching the end of it. Besides the intro, it takes the place underground which had its own set of issues but also allowed certain places to be a bit more complex. I really like how storage looks like and the corrosion bridge. And the robotic arms doing their work. And the displays on these large devices.

Also, the new enemy that I started in 2020 is looking good. It doesn't have proper sight and only sees motion. If you remain still, it may not hurt you unless it bumps into you. It gets confused sometimes but that kind of suits it well.

What is missing then? The ending. And a few enemies. I won't be doing anything extra. They are going to be a bit like variations of already existing enemies with their own flavours. And utilising new weapon core (well, reintroduced).

The ending is especially important as it should be one of the pivotal scenes in the story. I can't wait to hear what people make out of what they are going to see.

While working on the new enemy and new obstacles I decided to refactor health system a bit. Before I had a mix of continuous damage and health extra effects. They both could do the same job and it was a mess. It was all due to how continuous damage came to life and then how it was changed to actually be not a damage but more an overall state. Health extra effects took over most of the functions from continuous damage but I am going to keep continuous damage as what it is now - an important state about an entity. Health extra effects are now responsible for modifying inflicted damage, armour piercing, visual effects and more. They can be synced to continuous damage (which is case for being corroded) or work on their own (overcharged).

I also modified damage rules. These describe how characters should respond to given types of damage and for particular characters they define body parts that could be damaged. The general damage rules are combined into sets that can be easily included and used by various entities. This makes it easier to manage, keep consistent and tweak.

AI also had a few smaller changes. I generalised certain actions, like "run away" that are now shared between mutliple characters. Also the perception got improved a bit and a new way to detect enemies has been introduced. Motion detection. It is actually an extension to the sight that checks if a target is moving or not (for the player it checks head, hands and managing objects/weapons).

What comes after finishing the chapter?

Porting to a new device. Recording a gameplay video. Putting new music. Making first steps towards localisation (I want to automate as much as possible + expose files to native speakers). And of course, the next chapter.