Star Child DevLog #43

Jay Ingle - lead developer, designer, and artist:

This week I've been busy setting up a proper text system. This system is used to display controls during the tutorial section of Star Child. However, even more importantly, this is the voice of the antagonist. Well, part of the voice of the antagonist. Our sound designer Kyle (Anthrocarbon) is currently working on the auditory portion of the antagonist's voice.

I originally set up a method to display text on screen, for our demo release. But this was rushed. I just set up a Label and an AnimationPlayer. Then copy/pasted onto the scenes that needed to show text, and changed text or animation based on the scene. This system was extremely limited and inefficient, and I knew I would replace it later, when I had time. This past week was the time.

Here we have our node tree setup:

The Label is there to show our basic text. InputPromptKeyboard and InputPromptController are RichTextLabel nodes, they are used to show tutorial messages about the controls, such as "Press A to fire." They use the G.U.I.D.E. plugin to display controls based on your current control scheme: keyboard or controller, and auto-switch if the player changes between them.

Our fancy new TextSystem scene now has the capabilities to display exported text in a couple different ways: Timer (text shows up on screen after a certain amount of time), and Signal (text shows up when a signal is received to do so).

In the Star Child demo, when you arrive on the screen where you first pick up your Rocket weapon, a message would appear on the screen like "Press A to fire." However, this message was displayed when you enter the screen, NOT after you pick up the weapon. This confused players a bit, they would hit A to fire, it wouldn't happen, then they would realize that they needed to pick up the weapon first. Now, the message shows AFTER picking up the weapon. The Item system can now send a signal to the TextSystem, which informs the TextSystem that it is time to show the text now!

The signal can also contain info such as what text to display, which animation to play, and font color. And we can easily add new animations and effects for the text.

In other news, I have made a few big changes in regards to player movement/mechanics. Until this week, when you got hit in Star Child, you would lose all of your jumps. But now, if you jump once, then get hit in midair, you will still retain your dobulejump, that you can use after getting hit. Now this may allow an occasional intentional damage-boost by players wanting to go faster, but I think that is ok. You still lose momentum when getting hit, so you cannot just run thru everything.

I have also lowered the maximum fall speed. Which possibly probably maybe makes drop-jumping timing a bit easier.

Also, the automap is now an item you pick up. And we have a new screen in the demo where you pick it up, and, circling back around to our TextSystem, it tells you what button to press to view it.

And finally, congratulations to SpaciousJimmy to be the first person to beat the Star Child demo, on One Heart One Life mode! (See last devlog for details).