Note: From here-on-out, I'm going to be cross-posting the public updates from my Patreon blog to the devlog, as well! 

I apologize for how quiet I've been on the game's non-Patreon/Discord pages, and want to get folks up to speed.  

If you want to look through previous updates, check out my Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/zachwiebe

Hey, folks!

My last update was all about the boss framework. At the end of it, I mentioned that the next step was to use it to create all of the bosses that the game would need. The problem with that, however, was that it created a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem.

In my opinion, a good boss fight is one that tests the skills you've learned throughout the level itself in a different context. Without level to theme the boss fight around, how would I know if the boss was appropriate or not?

At that point, I realized it was time to change up my strategy. Rather than make all of the bosses in one batch, I would push the game into alpha and begin work on the stages themselves!

Though this be madness, there is method in't. The majority of the work in the original Game Maker version of Meander Forth went into designing and polishing the level layouts. I didn't want to let those perfectly-good stages go to waste, so I stitched one-to-one maps out of each of them.

Conveniently, nearly every level in the game has a completed layout, so very little time will need to go into them, this time around.

Once the map of the level was made, I imported it into Godot and used it as an onion skin for the revised version in the Godot editor, where I placed everything (almost) exactly where it was before. (Notice how the coins are lined up a little differently, now.) This new method makes rebuilding the levels a lot easier than doing it by eye.

Whereas the Game Maker version of the game had a lot of placeholder assets and dead ends, each level in the new version will be a milestone in-and-of itself. My current goal is to get the first stage, Pivot Outskirts, into a completed state with all of its level design, story events, and boss fight(s) intact.

When that's ready, I'll release that build to my patrons for feedback! Afterwards, I'll continue the process for the game's second level, the Arctic Fjord.

Since a lot of the heavy lifting has already been taken care of, I've been putting a bit more effort into polishing the visuals. I've reimplemented the parallax-scrolling backgrounds from the original game, and I've even added environmental details like waterfalls. If you look closely, you'll notice that they even splash some water up when you're standing in them!

I have some more stuff to share, but I'm going to hold off on it until a later update. This one's getting a little long-in-the-tooth as it is!

Thank you for reading! Hopefully, I'll have a playable build ready for the next blog post. Until then, I'll keep hammering out those outskirts!