Bloom - Development Update

In the most recent development update for Bloom, information is provided on programming, art and the world map.

Lately we have been digging more into abilities and getting them in the game (along with working out balancing issues). This meant more work on the inventory system (which is just about where we want it now, including having it set up for both controller and mouse / keyboard)....and also messing with the features needed to use them (mostly script events).

Though we still have to address some of the unique abilities (such as the track moss, which creates a patch of sound muffling moss that sticks to the feet of whatever steps on it for a bit....allowing them to sneak up on things while leaving mossy footprints), core plants like the sunleaf (gives energy to anything nearby) and the hushroom (saps energy) are working fine.

I also added a default melee ability for the prologue character, and after walking around a while....realize we very much needed a run button too (at least for the prologue, might handle speeding up travel a little differently in the core game). The run still needs to be implemented, but at least the animation + rendering is out of the way (should be a quick feature to add).  

I'll just list a few more things we added.

• Bridge feedback scaling for creatures based on their size

• Dialogue functions (though we are still working on this)

• Scaling control for creatures (including slight auto scaling while walking vertically to simulate perspective)

• Added "default target" ahead of player to allow abilities to be used when not using manual or lock-on target.

We also worked a bit on creatures sleep / tired, unconscious, and death states....but it still has a few missing aspects (such as a speed debuff as a creature or player becomes sleepy, or having death assign "dead" attribute to a creature automatically to keep abilities from hitting it). 

Anyhow, basically this next month we will be trying to get everything going to a point we can balance enemies damage / abilities and start to get a feel for how things will play (tweaking the speed of attacks, run speeds, adding abilities to counter them, stuff like that....good news is we are actually including quite a few abilities in the prologue to try out. So that will be fun! Especially the way you get them ...mu ha ha).