This week I mostly worked on getting the damn enemy entity navigation working properly, and a bit on creating a jump animation prototype for it as I went. Though it involved an awful lot of just staring at the same sections of code over and over again, I finally got it so the entity jump projection works, well, mostly properly. It looks kind of weird for some of the test scenarios, but I think will look nicer when all the animations are in place to cover some transitions and when the jump angles are a bit less weird and extreme.
There are a few prototype animations that need to be implemented, and several more that need to be created. Enemy entities being stunned and knocked back by player attacks is something that still needs some work, though they do at least properly take and deal damage now. Once I get that functionality in place I need to spend a while testing this entity out in different situations to make sure it behaves as expected, and once that’s done I can both expand it to make alternate versions and start slotting the final features of the player character into place — which will be neat, because then I can finally start making finalized animations and effects for the player.
So by the end of this week I want to have the basic version of this entity done: Proper navigation, proper combat interaction, and all prototype animations in place. This isn’t unmanageably ambitious, but will require me working a bit more consistently than I have been for a while. For a month or two I’ve been having a hard time maintaining motivation on this project: It often feels like what I’m trying to make won’t necessarily be of interest to anyone besides myself, or that I’ll bog down forever on some part of the project and never ever actually finish, that this will become one of those someday projects that one keeps looking dreamily toward and never quite reaches. And there’s no way to know for sure that it won’t be, or that anyone will care once I do finish it. But, you know, that’s true of everything. There’s no telling which roads lead somewhere worth being. So: Whatever. It’s a direction. It’s better than staying in place. I should just try to go faster, because it would suck to get there and find out the party has moved on without me.
Anyway, enough extended metaphor. Back to work.