Weekly Update #1

Hello, time for the weekly update! This is my first Sunday update. My plan is to update every Sunday. The biggest, recent news is that Jordan Gray has provided some sound effects that I plan to work into the game over the next week. They're mostly dog dying sound effects, which is a downer, but remember, the contemplation of death often bears fruit for the living of life! Lately, I've been working on redoing a lot of the code to make it easier for me to rework and rebalance the mechanics of  Big Bird. The other big project was redoing the level generation to include a procedurally generated air river. The plan is that the river will give general guidance to the players, but better players will know when it's a good idea to venture off river. This may work in conjunction with a hydration system, where coasting in the air river costs little to no fuel (note that it's not a water river), but going off river will begin to consume water. The idea is to place floating watering holes around the map and then place water drops on the map proportional to their proximity to a floating watering hole.

The other big thing I've working on since the June demo night has been the tutorial level. It's not procedurally generated, but rather is a hand crafted cave area. It begins with a few cooperation required doors and buttons, which seem glitchy. There's some enemies I'm calling leeches that only attack Big Bird if he's got a water tank attached, and even then, the basic (and currently only) type does no damage, but simply sucks water out and its sack grows. When killed, all the water can be regathered by Big Bird. Then there's some dudes throwing spinning rocks across the corridors you're trying to get through. These are a new damage type that dismount the rider, but do not kill the greyhound.

Destructible environments and threatening environments are things I'd like to implement soon. Work on the store and Big Bird cargo hold/fork lift, then a few bosses, a few more enemy types, then menus, and then polish that for a while. That's my general outline.

-Max