Hi and welcome to this weeks devlog!
Let’s start this one with a GIF of the finished product so those who don’t like reading can see it without clicking “show more”.

Cool right? Read on for more technical information on it.

Why the update?

Some of you might not have ever seen the original version of this battle. For context, the old version was chaotic to a point where it seemed unfair. Seals would attack randomly and all at once. The player was left with the near impossible task of trying to dodge and attack seven flying missile seals all at once. The easiest method of winning was to dive into a corner, turn around, and swing your sword like a mad man. It was not good. So we changed it!

The idea

We started as most people do, coming up with an idea on how to make this fight better. We knew we liked the seals. The seals were staying. The battle needed a change though. We wanted something that was more controlled, less random. A way to make seven seals control more as a unit than as separate seals.

So we came up with the seal ball!

We’ve never taken a particularly realistic approach with this game and we love silly humor. A seal ball fits both of those aspects perfectly.

Step 1

Step one was getting the seven seals to fly into the air and act as a single ball.
The first attempt didn’t look quite right:

Step 2

Once we had the seals forming a ball we needed a way to make it obvious to the player that the seals could not be hurt while in the ball. For this we made the seal ball react to being hit, but send the player backwards with no damage effects on the ball.

Step 3

Next we gave the seals the ability to actually attack the player!
Once again the first attempt at this did not go according to plan.

Step 4

Once we had the seals capable of attacking and having the basic battle working, we needed to do the intro. A smooth transition from calm friendly seals into the deadly seals they become.
Here is the result:

Step 5 - The Final Step

The final step was polish. We had the battle, the intro, and the end still worked from the previous version of the fight so no changes were needed there. We wont show the end here because SPOILERS!

For polish Anton basically just added some nice magic particles to the seals to further the ball look and make it look like the seals had more of an origin point where they’re spinning. You can see the result of this in the first gif.

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Thanks for reading!