I have modelled the main characters now. As I am doing this top down, I decided to just go for the hats that the characters might wear. This includes a Mage's hat, a Knight's helmet, a Ninja's mask and bandana, and a Gangster's hat (inspired by Night At The Museum 2). I have done this for both the good guys and the bad guys, each having a different colour scheme.

I also came up with some more ideas I could implement further down the line, the main new one being the weaknesses to other classes. I have listed these and tried to justify them below, and I have also listed the weapons that each class would use. I am currently question whether to call the melee class Melee or Ninja, I think I'll put a few polls up somewhere and see what others think.

Next I'll be doing some basic mechanics and testing them on one of the characters. I'll be starting with the player mechanics like moving, attacking, and picking up items. Once I've done this for one, I'll be implementing this for other classes as well so that all the playable characters have the basic mechanics.

I programmed some of the main mechaincs of the character today, the moving (including rotation) and the attacking. I went for the Mage character so the attacking was a magic spell. In most games the starting magic spell is fire so I modelled a fireball and that's what's being used as the projectile that the Mage is launching. I'm quite proud of how it's turned out, it looks pretty good. A video of this can be found below!

I think the next thing I'll try doing is adding a static enemy and seeing if I can get the fireball to damage the bad guy, adding a HP element in there. After that I might try working on enemy attacks, getting the enemy to attack automatically is definitely going to be needed. I'll most likely go for the Mage again as I've already got the fireball there. Look forward to Purple Mage vs Red Mage!

I have also started to think about changing the name. As this was the name of the university project, I feel it would be best to leave that name there and use a different one as I am doing this without the rest of the team. I'll be coming up with a few different names and most likely putting polls out to see what name is the most liked.

I have started programming enemy functions using the Red Mage enemy. It's still very basic at the moment, it just looks at the player and moves according to the distance between itself and the player. Next I will be making it attack the player and then I'll be putting a video up of how it's all working!

I have also implemented damaging enemies as the Mage, so shooting the fireball at the enemy will damage and eventually kill them. The plan is to have more powerful attacks avaliable to buy between each level so that enemies become easier to kill later on. I will be adding player HP with the enemy attacks so they'll be able to have a proper battle!

I have fixed the curving issue! The issue was the fact that the parent position (the Mage who shot the fireball) affected the position of the fireball itself. I fixed this by taking that away and having two different kinds of fireball instead, a "good" one and a "bad" one each shot the good Mage and bad Mage respectively. Nice easy fix!

I am still working on the name of the game itself for now, I'm leaning towards calling it "The Enhanced" but I'll ask what others think first and see if anyone else gives me any magical ideas.

I'll be working on items next. I plan to have the enemy drop coins once they die, then the player can pick them up and collect them for spending later on. Once I've got that down it's time to work on other characters! I'll probably do the Gunner first, I've already been working with projectiles so the programming shouldn't be too different, just a smaller projectile that moves a lot faster! After that I'll do the Rogue and finally the Tank. Once I've got the controlling and AI sorted for all of those it'll be onto weaknesses, and then scene design!

Two updates in one day?! What's going on?

I now have coins implemented! I don't have a coin counter or anything like that yet, that will most likely be added when the UI stuff is added as then I'll be able to have a visual number for how many coins are collected. The video below shows the coin in action!

The next task is adding more characters. As I said previously, I'll be doing the Gunner first as I already have projectile stuff here ready I just need to change the model and the speed and then add the AI into it. Overall, going well so far, no really big problems yet!

I now have Gunners working, both good and bad and they now fight each other. The way I'm doing it at the moment is quite messy and has a lot of separate scripts that could definitely be combined and I will work on that when I have everything working. Tidy scripts are a very important thing!

Next it's onto the Rogue. This character is melee and uses swords and other blades to attack. I'll have to change how the enemy moves for this one as for the other two, they kept their distance from the player to shoot at them, but this time I need them to get up close and personal. Once I've gotten that sorted, it'll be onto the Tank. I'm thinking of changing this class name to Warrior, as it seems more fitting considering the model for this character is a knights helmet. I am also still choosing the new name for the game as a whole, but that can wait as I still have a lot to do before I get anywheree close to releasing the game!

It's been a while since I have done anything to this project. I will be getting back to things soon though, so look out for content! I will still be doing the Rogue next, so nothing has changed there.

I took a break while I sorted out moving, and then couldn't find the motivation to get started. However, a couple of days ago I ended up sending a message to the recruitment manager of a big company, and I feel that while contacting people will help get me somewhere, the portfolio will also be a big part of things. So I plan to be getting back into it very soon! Keep an eye here for content!

I hope everyone is staying safe during the pandemic, the world has been a weird place recently.

So I am back to looking at working on things for this project. Previously, I had created the Mages and made them fight, and created the Gunners and made them fight. Now it's time to create the Rogues and make them fight.

It turns out I had already modelled a weapon for them (I had completely forgotten about that!) so that's the first thing sorted for me. It's a small dagger, which can be wielded close to the body and used quickly, making it a very high contender for fans of button-mashing. I will need to balance this by making sure it doesn't do too much damage per hit, otherwise it will be completely overpowered and break the game.

As for the AI, it will need to differ from the previous two. The Mage and Gunner stayed a distance away from the player, shooting them with either fireballs or bullets from afar. This won't work for the Rogue though, as it cannot throw the blade. This means I'll need to program it to get a lot closer to the player so it can actually fight and be a half decent challenge.

This will be a nice challenge, as I'll need to get back into programming and I'll need to work out a new way of controlling the enemy. Bring it on!

Progress has once again been made! I have been working on the Rogue character today. Getting the moving done was easy, as I've done moving before so that was nice and easy. I then got the bad Rogue to move as well. As I said before, this would need to move differently due to the fact it's a melee character, not a ranged character. So I set it to have a set distance of around 2.5 units away from the player, which gives enough distance that the two don't start clipping into each other, but also gets close enough that the blades will be able to collide with the opponent.

Once the movement was done for both, I got the player's blade involved. What I wanted was the blade to stay close to the player even while moving, and for the blade to rotate between two points around the character's centre position to represent a slash with the blade. This firstly meant setting the character to be the parent of the blade, which was simple enough as I have done this (in a way) with all my other characters and their weapons. I then used a very handy "RotateAround" function within Unity to rotate the blade around the centre of the character. The blade now instantiates upon mouse click, rotates between the two points, and then destroys itself.

The next thing I'll be doing is getting the enemy to also be able to attack, so they'll need their own dagger and I'll need to tell it how to use it. Once that can happen, I'll be able to apply the HP decreasing scripts to the blades and characters and then they can start actually dealing some damage. I'll also edit the code slightly so that as well as the blade possibly destroying when it reaches the final point around the character, it will also destroy itself if it comes into contact and deals damade to the opponent. Once those two are fighting, I'll be able to move onto my final class, the Knight!

I had to take a break again to sort out moving again, but I've settled into my new place so I can start working on this again!

I have programmed the bad Rogue to attack the player, the dagger rotates around the enemy the same way it rotates around the player now which is fantastic. The characters can now chase after each other, attack each other, and die. When the player dies, as this is still a testing file, all that happens is that a "You died!" message appears in the console, but when the enemy dies, the body and weapon are destroyed and a coin is left in its place. The Rogues are now complete!

The next task is to create the Knight and his weapon. I already have the character models as seen below (04/05/2020) so now I just need to create a weapon of some kind. Knights were known to use swords and shields when they fought, and seeing as blades are already taken, I will be using a shield to attack. I will need to model one and then implement it in a similar way to the dagger, except much, MUCH slower.

I have modelled the shield and it can be seen below! I'm quite proud of it, I got the curve done quite well I think.

Next it'll be getting the Knight to be able to use the shield and then the bad Knight after that. I know how I want it to look, I want a thrust forward with the shield to make it look like the character is bashing their opponent with the shield.

The player can now make their Knight use the shield by thrusting it forward. It disappears after a short time so that the player can use it again. The bad Knight can also attack the player now, so that is the end of the player vs enemy programming! Right?...

Unfortunately, there is one problem I have come across that should hopefully be reasonably easy to fix. Currently, all enemies look for something with the tag "Player", and it doesn't matter what class the player has chosen, they will always have this tag. However, each enemy has a different tag depending on what class they are. At the moment, each player class can only attack and damage the enemy of the same class type, but my Knight cannot attack the mage, rogue or gunner. Having the separate tags is still optimal as it will make things a million times easier later on when I program weaknesses to certain types and all of that, so I just need to alter the player programming slightly so that they can attack all class types.

Once I've altered this programming, I will be able to move on to the next part of the game at last! I think the next thing I'll be doing is some scene development, so that the players have somewhere to actually move around instead of floating in what is currently a big red void. Once I've got a basic design of some kind, I'll fill the room with some obstacles for the player and enemies to move around, change the enemy AI so that they do actually move around the obstacles instead of running headfirst into a big pillar. While this would be funny to watch, it's not the best idea ever.

I have started creating the assets for the levels as shown below. This will take a little while as there are a lot of assets to create!

My idea is to have each level act as a maze, where the player has to work their way around rooms trying to find the exit. Each level has a different theme (e.g. forest, sky etc.) and will therefore need different assets. Each room in each level will be set out slightly different with the obstacles in slightly different places and different numbers of enemies. Each room will also have walls around the outside of it mainly to stop enemies running off screen. My ideas for what the walls are made of are as follows:

Forest - trees

Desert - sandstorm

Ice - ice wall

Water - no walls, just water that can't be crossed

Volcano - lava falls and rock walls

Sky - clouds

Mountain - rock walls

I also plan for some of the levels to have special unique features, like the sky being the only one with no obstacles in the rooms, and the volcano having randomly falling rocks that can block your path or possibly kill the player. I don't yet know what order to put the levels in but given time I should be able to work out the order that puts the easier levels first and the more difficult levels later.

I also came up with an idea for my boss fights. For my dissertation for university, I plan to be looking at enemy evolution, where throughout the game the enemies evolve to challenge the individual player and their playing style. I was thinking about possibly putting that into this game and having the bosses choose their class types and weapons based on what the user has been struggling to fight and what class the user is weaker against. This would make for a more individually fulfilling game, as it would be tailored to fit the individual player instead of just having the same boss fights for everyone, where some players would find the bosses a challenge and some would find them easier. This method of creating the bosses would make the game in a way where every player faces a challenge. I'll see if I can get it working in my dissertation first, using a different project, and if I can then I'll attempt to implement it into the bosses.

It's been a while since I've had time to work on this, as Uni has been keeping me more busy than ever with animation and engine building and lots of stuff.

Once thing was decided though: the name of this project. It may be changed again by the time this has finished, but I needed to move away from BioEnhanced, as that's an old project that is no longer being developed. The new name is (drum roll please)...

Project Enhanced

I like this name better if I'm honest, I feel it fits the "story" more. So, from now on, this project shall be known as Project Enhanced, and it will be called this when I eventually complete it and send it off for release. Now that I'm free I'll actually be able to work on it as well!

I've had some ideas about where to go with this and what I can implement. For my dissertation, I am working on a type of AI that, if successful, I would very much like to implement here. I have also started looking into level generation like the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games, where every floor is different every time you go into it. If I can get those two working, they would be excellent additions to this game. But for now, back to basic level design. If I can acually work out how to do grass in Unity that would be great...

I have changed my mind on the forest area style. I tried to use hair particles in Blender to create a grass effect, which was fine while within Blender. However, when trying to export this to Unity, it fails and does not export. Therefore, I have gone for a different approach. I have instead modelled a flower, and duplicated it several times over a green plane. This has been imported correctly, and the result can be seen below. I think it's pretty!

I have also modelled a tree that will be surrounding the area, which can be seen below, along with what one of the final tiles will look like! This is before I add in camera controls, which will be done so that when a player goes to exit one room, the camera flows over to the next square of terrain. There will be lots of squares of terrain in one level, and to get between two squares there will be a gap in the trees for the player to pass through. There will be colliders there to stop the enemies passing through, as having them pass from one room to another would not be a fun thing to deal with in game.

Once I know colliders work and the enemies cannot move outsid of the room, I will construct an entire level and add in camera controls, and then I'll have a playable game! Of course this won't be the end, I still need to add in things like UI and sound and other levels, but this will be an excellent start on the road to release!

I changed the way the characters move, making them more flowy instead of rigid by adding force instead of just setting the position. This allowed me to actually make the characters and trees collide instead of clipping inside each other.

I have also finished creating level 1! The forest level is complete, but I may add more so that there are a number of forest levels to go through before moving on to the next area. I have tied the camera position to the player position, and set up environment outside the main maze area so that the void cannot be seen. There is a trigger collider at the exit that currently resets the scene, but this will be changed to suit the game later on.

The whole level can be seen below, along with a recording of the level being played! I now have the most basic gameplay, and I will be developing further levels later on along with GUI elements and a menu. I'm unsure of what to actually implement next, I will decide within the next couple of days.

So unfortunately, I did come down with COVID shortly after the last update, however I am fully recovered now and am back at uni with courseworks and a dissertation taking up a lot of my time. Not all of it though, as I managed to find some time this morning to make a small update to this!

I fixed the floatiness of the characters by changing how they moved, now it's more game and less physics simulation. I also started adding some GUI elements, at the moment it's just the HP and the coin counter but progress is still progress! I am also looking at tidying up the project soon, once I've got the main GUI elements sorted and I know what I'm doing with them.

Opening up this project again to work on it some more felt great, I've missed it a lot. Unfortunately, it did also remind me that at some point I will need to do more level design, which will hurt my brain again! But, in all honestly, I highly look forward to being able to work on this properly for a good amount of time without uni work coming first.

It has been a long time since I got to work on this! I had my uni work to finish (some of which will be up on here soon), then I had a game jam (which will be up on here VERY soon), and finally I have free time to spend on this project. I'm glad to be back!

I looked at where I left this last time I updated it, and found something horrible. I had to do more level design. Designing mazes is something I can do if I really try, but there must be a simpler way, right? A way that doesn't involve hours of going over maze designs for ages? Maybe even a way that makes the game more replayable?

Of course there is! Random maze generation has been a thing for many years, and today I finally looked into it. In a separate Unity project, I put together a random maze generator that can take in any floor size and produce an appropriate maze for me. This was accomplished with a recursive backtracker algorithm, which is quite a fun little thing to implement! Below there some screenshots of some different mazes that were created using this algorithm.

Now that I've saved myself hours of maze design, all I need to do is transfer this algorithm over to the main project so I can give it the floor and tree assets I created before, then get some beautiful mazes being generated! Throw some enemies in there and I have a great level ready to go.

I combined the maze generation algorithm with the assets from the previous project and had a few scaling errors, but now that that's all fixed I can create mazes using the assets from before. An exmaple of this is seen below.

I made this in a separate 3D project, instead of a 2D one like the previous projects were in. This was part of the reason for the scaling errors but it all turned out alright in the end. The next thing I will be doing is moving over all of the scripts from before so that I can recreate the logic from before. This should be complete in the next couple of days!

The player mage is back in now! Getting the rotation working took a little while but I got there in the end, and now the mage is moving, looking at the mouse again and shooting fireballs. I'll get the 4 enemies done next so that we have something to fight, and see if I can get them moving around the maze properly. Fun AI things!

I've added in the enemy mage now, and as I was doing this I changed my mind about something. For these normal enemies, I'll have them spawn in and then stay where they are. I'll implement boss fights and such that have a bigger area with a moving boss and then spawn these non-moving enemies in there as well. But that's for later. For now, time to implement more enemies!

I've added a small code block to the character instantiation that spawns the enemies in random places across the map, and I can easily add and remove enemies from the spawn list as needed, and they will never spawn on top of each other or on top of the player (though they may spawn next to the player!). This makes things easier later on, as I won't have to worry about working out the best places to spawn enemies. Random mazes with random enemy spawn locations!

The enemy rogue has been added along with it's dagger, getting the swing to work right was a pain but I got there in the end! I don't think it'll make an appearence in the first level, same with the knight and the gunner, but it's now ready for use in future levels.

The enemy gunner returns ready to shoot all the bullets it can at the player. As this is quite a difficult enemy to defeat without taking damage due to how fast the bullets move, this will be an enemy for later levels when the game should be getting more difficult. I may make the bullets do less damage than other weapons purely so that the player won't get completely wiped out by them instantly every time they run into one of these. It also means the player can't just choose the gunner character and run around having way too nice a time, we need some sort of challenge in there!

The enemy knight has also been revived, shield in hand, ready to bonk the player on the head for getting too close. These will definitely be doing more damage later on, as they are very slow and easy to dodge, so it should be quite difficult to get hit by them. And that's all the main enemies done! For now at least...

UI is back in the game, and just as last time, it's only the HP and the coin counter. At some point I hope to have a little UI sprite I can use as a background for these things, as well as maybe a personal font I can use! That would look cool. The next thing I'll be adding is the different damage numbers as mentioned above, as well as the weaknesses I mentioned back when I started this project. As the first level will only contain mages, the player won't immediately see these weaknesses unless they choose the rogue as their character. I'll focus on the mage first and just use that for all the levels for now.

After just over a year of development, class weaknesses are finally in the game! That took a while...

I've set each weapon to have a set damage amount, and then when it collides with the player, it checks which class they are, and if it's the right combination (for example a fireball hitting a knight) then the damage is doubled. I've also set the starting HP values to accomodate this rise in damage, so that everything doesn't just die in one hit. As the melee weapons have the obvious disadvantage of being melee weapons, I have increased the damage they do to compensate for this.

I added a little something to the UI as well. Every time the player gets damaged, the HP text flashes red for a second, and every time a coin is picked up, the coins text flashes gold for a second. While not the biggest change, it looks cool, and that's what matters most with this development.

There's a video below of how this version is looking so far. My current issue is the map generation. I can create the tiles that are actually part of the maze, but then the player can see off the edge of the map. I'm thinking I still need to create them in the map generation script but just how and where is my problem. I'll be working on this next.

I had a bit of a break yesterday after receiving some less than great news, but I'm back today and ready to go again. As I said last time, the first thing I'll need to do is find a way to create the map outside of the maze so that the player can't see the edge of the map. Did I find a way to do this?

Yes I did! Expanding the map by 3 tiles in all 4 directions and then creating new tiles in all positions where one didn't already exist means no map edge is visible and the game looks a lot better because of it. Now that that's done, I need to decide what to do next. There are a few things I could work on. I could do the design for another level, I could do a start screen, I could do the other weapons for the characters. As I don't have a 2D UI sprite yet, I think I'll leave the start screen for now. I have the plans for the different levels, so I could create the floor and wall assets for those. I also have some ideas for more weapons for the mage. The thing I'll be working on first is...

None of those! The first thing I'm working on is an area for a boss fight, followed by some sort of boss the player can fight and getting the logic down for that. The area will be much like the maze, with the floor tiles and then trees surrounding the area. I'll have to experiment with sizes for the area to make sure the player can be seen without them being too small, but also big enough that the boss doesn't take up the entire screen. I won't have the camera moving for this one, it'll just be above the centre of the area. Lets see how it looks!

I had to expand the outside of the map to cover the edges again but it's looking alright at the moment. A screenshot of the first test is below! I need to add in the player character and check that they're visible next.

They're visible but they are a bit small and move a bit slower than I'd like, so I think I'll be using a smaller area for now. Once I've fixed the sizing issue (and an issue with the mouse position) then I can work on creating this boss. It'll be a forest themed boss to fit the level, of course!

I'm still working on that boss, weight painting can take a while with so many bones in this armature! I did have one idea though.

A lot of big games at the moment have some sort of multiplayer involved. There's Destiny 2, Among Us was recent, Fortnite has been big for a while now. So if I was to implement multiplayer into my game, how would I do so? I was thinking something along the lines of a 4v4 match, each player chooses their class and then they get the most powerful weapon that they've unlocked for that class. This will also involve a save state, so I can save what the highest level of each class is and then can use that in the multiplayer. The two teams fight until one team is completely dead, and the surviving team win. Save states our reasonably new to me outside of basic .txt files, but they shouldn't be too hard. Networked multiplayer is something I've worked with before, both when I made the 4-player pong game and then again when I made my own game engine. I think this would be a great addition to the game!

The boss has been animated! There's four separate animations (idle, normal attack, special attack, death) which will be used in different circumstances, I just need to work out how I want the boss to be programmed. I think I will use stages in which the special attack becomes more likely when the boss is at a lower health percentage, and more normal enemies spawn as the boss gets closer to death. There's a video down below showing the four different animations! The video shows a low-poly version of the tree, which will be higher poly for the game itself. It also shows the animations from two angles, a front angle and a top angle more like the one that will be seen in the actual game.

The tree boss is now fully implemented! It has two attacks, a stick throw and a leaf machine gun type attack, it takes more damage from the mage and does more damage to the gunner. There's a video below of a test fight against it!

Now that I've got this done, The next thing is either a new level, or a start screen and some UI updates. 2D art is not my best element, so I may look around for an artist that can help. I think I'll do the logic for the main menu first, and then get the art done later. After each level I'll have it return to the main menu and then the next level will become available to the player. After that logic is sorted, it's time for the next level. I'll be making new tiles and walls for it, and it will hopefully look great!

Quite a lot of work today. The first thing I did was get the logic for a main menu sorted, which now does everything except an options screen (I'm unsure what I'm going to put in here, there's a few possible things but I'll have a think about it). This menu starts as a main front screen with start, options and exit. Clicking start sends the player to the character selection screen, which also includes showing how many coins the player has accumulated over the course of the game, as well as the current HP of the four characters. Once a character is chosen, the level selection screen appears, but as there is only one level at the moment, there's only one option here.

Following this, I felt it was necessary to create the other 3 playable characters. I spent time creating these, so now the player has 4 options of character to choose from. Each character has their own HP, and these go down individually. The next thing I will do is implement a system where the player can spend coins to heal their characters. I will also try to get some images of the 4 characters to put in the menu instead of just red squares. I'll also need to add an upgrades menu where the player can spend coins on more powerful weapons.

There's a video below showing the progress from today!

Healing is fully working now! The character selection screen includes heal buttons for each character, and now when clicked, they check that the character isn't already at full HP, and that the player has enough coins, and then heals the character (if appropriate) for up to 20 points with a maximum of 100.

I have added rendered images of the four playable characters to the character selection menu as well now, and a screenshot of it now can be seen below! The images are .png files, makes things much easier for this!

I want to try and comepletely finish the menu before I go back to doing level design, and this means coming up with more weapons for each character. For the mage this has already been planned out, I'll be adding a blizzard spell and then a thunder spell. For the other characters I'm not sure. I'm thinking about a minigun for the final weapon for the gunner, but I don't know about the middle weapon.

It didn't take as long as expected, I now have the plans for the rest of the weapons! The mage will have fire, then blizzard, then thunder. The rogue will have a dagger, then a katana, then a scythe. The gunner will have a handgun, then a shotgun, then a minigun. The knight will have a shield, then a hammer, then a mace. Time to go make some weapons!

All the weapons have been modelled! There are screenshots of them all below, I'll get proper renders of them all when I need them for the menu. You'll notice that there's only one bullet, but this was intentional. I'll be scaling this up for the shotgun, and then using this scaled up one for the minigun as well.

The next thing will be getting the logic for the upgrades menu done. After that, I'll be getting the renders done to get those into the menu as well. Then I'll be getting the weapon swapping done, I think I'll make it so that only the most recent upgrade is used, not giving the choice of all 3. I don't imagine people would use a lower level weapon when a higher one is there!

Each of the final upgrades will have an ability. The mage's thunder will be able to go through walls and hit things the other side. The rogue's scythe will have a chance for an instant kill. The gunner's minigun will have explosve rounds as the final round in a magazine that deals extra damage. The knight's mace will be able to break the walls in the maze (not the edge walls though, or the walls in the boss room). I'll add these abilities in when I program these weapons!

All the weapons have been completed! They're all in the game and the characters can use all of them correctly now, including special abilities that come with the level 3 weapons. I have decided to give each character their own upgrade menu, as most people seem to favour context specific menus over generalised menus. The upgrades stay permanent after being bought and can only be bought if the player has enough coins. I also went and rendered some images of each weapon so that the menus showed the actual weapons instead of red squares, just like I did with the characters previously. Everything is now working with the upgrades menu, the characters use the different weapons depending on their current weapon level (kept separate for each character of course) and it's all looking a whole lot better! There's some screenshots below of all the upgrade menus!

I think the next thing I'll work on is the options menu. In here I'll include normal gameplay options (brightness, volume etc.) and a controls page. Some of this won't actually change anything yet (I have no sounds!) but it will be there for when it is needed.

I have also made some more decisions. I believe the best option for a final boss would be to bring back all the previous bosses from the previous levels and have the player fight them all at the same time. On top of this, I have also decided that it would be best to create a separate space on this site for the demo and keep that up to date with any trailers I make, any talks about the game itself and things like that, and keep this as a devlog space. This may also lead to a slight redesign of this page, so keep an eye here!

I started work on the options menu today. The two volume sliders don't currently affect anything due to the lack of music and sound effects in the game. The brightness slider affects the light intensity in the levels, but does not affect the brightness of the UI. I've done a test build and everything is working as it should! All it's missing is the 2D art for the UI and the music/sound effects. Once I've got that, I'll have the demo ready to go!

I took a break for a few days to sort out moving again and see if I could get any sort of ideas for the buttons, other UI art, and the music. While I'm still not sure on menu backgrounds and fonts, I do have my own button designs now and I've come up with a small repeatable music piece that can be used in the boss fights, and another that can be used in the levels. They're both have a similar pattern to them, but if differs enough that one can tell which is meant for the mazes and which for the bosses. I plan to talk to several different composers, give them these melodies and the theme of one of the levels, and see what they can come up with. I want to try using a different composer for each level, so that I get an amazing soundtrack with many different styles, while also getting the names of more composers out there. I have some in mind already, but I will have to look around for more.