Garden 2 May updates

Sprites

I started out May by creating individual NPCs from the existing base class and adding some necessary animations before I could tackle the cutscenes by using level sequences. Finishing up the animations for rest of the characters will be done after I know what each of them are doing during the cutscenes.

Princess Unu's walking sprite.

Level sequences

The level sequences turned out to be pretty straightforward to use for my purposes, though there are lots of options and adjustments to make which take most of the time. The sequences in Garden 2 mostly control camera movement and trigger events from the actors usually for moving or playing dialogue.

The sequences play out at the beginning of the level and when the player reaches a certain areas in the level, for example a boss introduction sequence plays when the player reaches the boss room for the first time.

A take from the sequence that plays at the beginning of the level.

Speaking of bosses, I had to add all of the dialogue code from the friendly NPC base to the enemy base, since they don't inherit that code from anywhere. Afterwards I figured that a good way to do dialogue for actors is to create an actor component that includes all nessecary dialogue code. That way dialogue can be added to any new actor. Another important change to the enemy code was to disable their AI during sequences, so the boss doesn't clobber up the player during a cutscene.

I modified the dialogue sheet to have a check in each line wether they should only be played during a sequence, so the dialogue in sequences does not interfere with regular dialogue. The check then happens when the NPC looks for its next dialogue line to play. This turned out unnessecary for Garden 2, since all of the dialogue happens during sequences but it's something to keep in mind for future.

The work on level sequences will continue over to June and probably to July. There are two boss sequences and a sequence after the second boss is defeated left to do. After that I want to tweak each sequence to be more fluid and look more like cutscene (hiding the UI for example), and then to adding dialogues that have already been played to the save file so they do not trigger again.