Kalia and the Goblin Landship (Chapter 3 dev update)

Hello all! It's been over two months since my last devlog, so I felt it was time for another update on the development of the KatFS demo chapter 3. I want to begin by saying that development seems to be going at a good pace to reach my goal of releasing this major update before Christmas!

In the last devlog, we went through the early stage of level designing for chapter 3. You may recall a screenshot of the entire level layout, which back then consisted only of barren streets, buildings and placeholder barriers. Well, the level has seen a lot of work since then! I'll let the following screenshots showcase it:

Not only has the scene been decorated and populated with props, the enemy encounters have been designed and scripted, as well as the general intended level flow and systems. Currently, chapter 3 is 90-95% done, with only a few parts needing an additional detailing pass, and the boss fight scripting to be set up.

This chapter has also necessitated the development of a couple new gameplay features, maybe a bit too many to include in a single short-form update post. But let's go through a couple of them anyway!

First, a simple improvement with a major impact - most attacks now check against world geometry when calculating whether they hit or not. This means that both Kalia and her enemies can take advantage of hard-cover from now on! No more hitting enemies through walls! (albeit attacks will still go through soft props and enemies)

A major objective in chapter 3 will be unlocking a gate by locating three crystals to power a device with. This new "key and keylock" type of logic had to be coded, with all the checks and balances to make sure it plays nice with save states and reloading.

And speaking of saving and loading, while checkpoints will still be present in chapter 3, its more open format had me decide to enable quicksaving and quickloading anywhere in the level. Just use this new ability responsibly, as the demo only keeps track of a single savefile! (There are plans to allow for unlimited files in the future)

Currently, chapter 3 is fully playable from beginning all the way to the lead-up to its boss fight. Which has taken a significant chunk of development time in these two months, but I'm glad to say is very nearly finished, definitely enough for a video showcase! (Bear in mind the cutscene, boss arena and some minor boss tweaks are still WIP!)

The landship's primary attacks come from its side guns, with each being able to cover a certain area around the vehicle. These guns can be individually targeted and destroyed to disable these attacks, but in order to do so, Kalia must first break through the landship's armor plates!

The landship also features a secondary attack in the form of its bombard cannons, which can strike anywhere in the arena, requiring Kalia to stay on the move at all times! Initially, it will fire these only to support its main attacks, but as the fight progresses and the main guns are disabled, it will change tactics and be more aggressive in using its bombards.

Finally, the landship has a self-extinguishing mechanism that also doubles as a close range attack. If Kalia gets too close, it will deploy this attack, which should prompt you to get out of the way! The landship will also employ it should it catch on fire.

That is all there is to show for now! As you can see, chapter 3 is very close to completion, with only some minor adjustments left, and plenty of time for playtesting and music. Thank you for your attention!