#mayu's lantern

[serpentworks]

Nothing like a fresh bunch of assets to bring new life to a project #madewithunity #gamedev #MayusLantern

[a-disgruntled-dragon]

Sometimes I make simple AI and get animations to work at 3:30 in the morning instead of sleeping or dealing with UI bugs in my other game. 

[serpentworks]

Mayu’s Lantern Devlog #2

Hello again! It’s time for another devlog! There wasn’t one last weekend as I was out of town and visiting family and there wasn’t much to report by itself anyway.

This past week was all about enemies. There’s not a lot in the way of combat in Mayu’s Lantern; Mayu can’t harm the enemies for some very specific in story reasons. Yet the stealth aspect wouldn’t work if there weren’t something for her to have to avoid. After trying to fix the attacking trigger on my larger enemy, and looking at my code and going “oh dear gods what the heck” I ended up redoing my AI.

Again.

For the 3rd time.

(I never said I was efficient, people.) 

I acquired the asset Behavior Designer during the June asset store sale (when I bought the art assets) and went “well what the heck lets try this instead.” Turns out, it’s a lot easier to understand your AI when you can see why it’s not going after your player, because it can’t see it. It’s a bit hard to get at first (and the documentation sucks) but it’s powerful once you figure out how it all functions together. 

Anyway. ML currently has four enemy types, introduced below!

Wanderers

[fake New York accent] ‘Ey! I’m walking ‘ere!

These are the large lumbering patrol enemies. They dwarf Mayu, but they’re slow, stun able, and distract able. Currently, they’re represented by giant golems, though this may change in the future. Of the four, these have the most complicated AI tree. If alerted to Mayu’s presence, either by seeing them or by a Watcher, they will converge on her presence (as best they can) and punch her into oblivion. They’re one of the most common enemies, and the first type you’ll encounter.

Watchers

They have angry eyes.

These stationary bats are stuck to walls and can only really turn and watch the floor below them. They have a decent range, and you can see this by the light they project on the floor. Their one eye is not all seeing though, and Mayu can sneak around them if she pays attention to the direction of the bat. If Mayu is caught in the Watcher’s vision though, all of the Wanderers in the area will be alerted to her presence and seek her out. You encounter these second.

Lurkers

Tasty, tasty souls...

Lurkers are an odd sort of enemy. They’re relatively stationary, but will lunge at Mayu if she comes within their sight. They hide in the shadows, with only their eyes and growls to let Mayu know they’re there. More of a ‘hazard-type’ enemy, Mayu can stun these to pass, or can place something in front of them to block their lunge. Lurkers won’t stay behind blocks forever though so you need to be quick.

Spitters

The ‘I need a new name’ enemy type

These enemies are pretty neat, as Mayu can use them to effect things in the environment too. Modeled here by this lovely lava golem, these enemies shoot out projectiles. They move in a straight line in front of them, and either can be on all the time - forcing Mayu find a way to disable them or turn them - or only when Mayu is in front of them, meaning she has to move quick to get out of the way! Or sneak beneath their sight line. If Mayu stuns these, she can turn or move them. Some doors and locks will need a darker power than what Mayu’s lantern contains, and these enemies are just the right fit for it. They definitely need a better name though. 

Now with Proper Idles!

Mayu now doesn’t always care her lantern, and her animations work with her movement and crouching. Given she might not always have her lantern with her, it’s a good idea to have a selection of animations that don’t have things in her hands. 

Level Progress and Camera Changes

The quality.... weeps

The first part of the demo level is almost all fleshed out with meshes, save some grass and trees or knicknacks. I found I did a lot of detail work in places you couldn’t exactly see, given the camera. So now the camera pans when Mayu is farther away from it, and rotates to look down as Mayu get’s closer to it. I had a script that did this before, but I changed over to Cinemachine (which makes cuts for environment things soooo much easier) and wasn’t sure how to do it at first. A little tweaking on the Confiner Extention as I got something I really like.

That’s all it for now! Got some more fleshing of the enemies to work on and setting up more interactions!

Until next time!