April Development Progress

I hope you've been enjoying The Stickman so far! I was doing a monthly update before release and I'm going to keep it going. I am still not ready to release World 3 (about 70% done right now) but I want to show the progress I've made so far and tease what's coming. This is going to be mainly about the challenges of development and not about the features themselves.

World 3: Terkus

These levels have you constantly swapping between the Past (Ice) and the Future (Lava). The difficulty takes a leap in this world but I think the levels are really fun. Getting to this environment took several iterations. Figuring out how to change materials and models between past and future was an interesting challenge. Because every single model has to work both ways.

Another challenge was figuring out assets that exist in the future that don't exist in the past and vice versa. Objects that disappear in the future are actually simple, broken door, broken window, etc. Objects in the future that weren't there in the past was difficult to figure out.

New Vehicle: T.I.T.A.M

A new vehicle I'm working on is called the T.I.T.A.M (Tall Intimidating Titan Annihilating Mech)! The T.I.T.A.M is a massive mech where you can annihilate loads of enemies! It's a little slower than the H.O.R.S.I.E, but it has way more firepower and takes significantly less damage.

The challenge with the TITAM is the leg animation vs the look up and down. If you look at the model, the legs are connected to a central cylinder which rotates depending on where the pilot wants to go. But the cabin also only looks left and right, it has no way to rotate up and down. Figuring out how to allow the player look up and down was challenging, but the current state helps sell the idea that you are in a giant mech.

4 New Weapons

World 3 also includes 4 new weapons! I've teased some of these before, but I'm going to repeat them and talk about their making.

Charger: Hold the trigger to deal more damage in a bigger radius!

This weapon's barrel actually went through a few different iterations. It was originally going to be a Railgun with an opening and building electricity, but modeling that was actually very difficult to make the scaling look correct. The short stock kind of forced the barrel to be a full thing. The ammo "charge" also depletes the more you fire, so you'll see it slowly become grayscale.

Raygun: Shoot ricocheting bullets which deal more damage with each deflection!

This weapon turned out surprisingly good for me. Getting the hole for the ammo was the hardest part. Mixing a cylinder with a smooth cubic handle was also difficult topology to figure out. I think I restarted on it 3 or 4 times before finally figuring it out. This weapon's ricocheted bullets do more damage which is fun to use. Instead of shooting the enemies straight on, you're trying to shoot the ground and deflect the bullets into enemies which I don't know if any other shooter has done before. The ammo also gets smaller the more you fire, eventually disappearing once all ammo is used.

Double Barrel: A close range shotgun with serious knockback!

The idea of having a double barrel shotgun actually be two barrels was the most obvious pun. This weapon model is probably one of the best I've done. It wasn't that it was super difficult to model, it just took a while to look proper. This weapon's level uses its knockback as part of the level which has some interesting complications. Because instead of having 2 jumps, you have 4 because of the 2 shots in the shotgun.

Katana: Close range sword that you can fling yourself towards!

The Katana was a super fun model. I got carried away and actually made it way too high poly and had to go back and reduce it a lot. What's special about the Katana is it's the only weapon with several animations. The weapons each have firing animations but this one required multiple. Getting those animations to look fluid was a real challenge. At first, they just looked wrong. But after studying how a few other games do it, I was able to land on a few animations that feel fluid. The Katana is also a movement weapon. The alt fire allows you fling yourself towards the sword which opens up some interesting level design opportunities.

Bug Fixes and QoL

There are a few major bugs I've fixed in small updates, but I've also done some QoL behind the scenes of small things that annoyed me.

What Else is Planned?

I have a few more PvP modes I haven't started on yet like Volleyball, HORSIE PvP, TITAM PvP, and possibly Avalanche. I am also looking at adding Ghost Data. The problem with stuff like this is the more I add to a single update, the more time it takes to release, so some of these might come out incrementally after the World 3 Update.

For More Regular Updates

If you want more regular updates, join the Discord! I post small updates in there a lot more often!