RESONANT BLADE

Indie Game Devlog Episode 19: Sonic GRENADES and Underground Scene!

INTRO

Hey, everyone! Welcome to Episode 19 of the Resonant Blade Devlog series! Not a whole lot to show since the last devlog, but I’ve been working on implementing the Sonic Grenades, exploding rocks, and a new underground scene.

SONIC GRENADES

The Sonic Grenades are an item that the player gets after completing a quest. I’m not sure if I should make these an item with a limited supply or somehow tied to energy or Resonant Charges yet. Sonic Grenades can be used to break destructible items, damage enemies, and destroy obstacles blocking the player’s path. You’ll need these to reach the next area after the end of the demo. I had to make four new animations for the main character and somehow add it into the player’s animator controller.

When throwing grenades, the range of the throw depends on how long you hold down the throw button. I still need to add in a small UI meter showing the power of the throw somewhere above the player’s head. While holding throw, the player’s movement is disabled. Input for movement will instead change the direction of the grenade throw. Even though Resonant Blade will not have any mouse input, you can still throw the grenades diagonally.

I had to tweak the throw physics to be different for throwing UP vs throwing DOWN because of the tilted top-down perspective of the game. After playing around with it enough, I think I got the physics pretty well balanced for all the different directions. This was, of course, after going through some unforeseen hurdles where the grenades ended up looking more like homing torpedos. These might have to be a feature…

After getting the physics and mechanics down, I added in some more particles to show the damage radius and some lightning effects. I also made the grenades take on the color of whatever Resonant Tone the player has equipped.

LOCRIA SUBWAY TUNNEL

I wanted to make a short scene with some light puzzles and some enemies that the player would have to go through to get to Locria City.

To reach this area, you’ll need to use the Sonic Grenades to destroy the blocked off area in the Subway. I added a couple of things to indicate to the player that this is a blocked off path that can be unlocked at a later point. When the player runs up to the rocks blocking the path, the rocks shake around and some small rock particles fall down. When trying to attack the rocks, the player’s attack now gets interrupted instead of the sword just passing through. I also added this interruption to the crystal switches in other underground scenes.

The new area will introduce the player to the Resonant Rocks. There’s a forcefield with a switch on the other side of it. The only way for the player to reach the switch is to absorb the charges from the Resonant Rocks. There was also an annoying bug I had to fix where absorbing the charges from the rocks would not trigger the Triad ability until after the player Parried. After absorbing these 3 charges, the player’s Wave Blade will activate. This attack will go through the forcefield and activate the switch allowing the player to pass through.

The next area is a similar concept except the player will have to charge up the Resonant Blade while on a moving platform. I realized that the player could just go back to the original Resonant Rocks and charge up there, so I made a platform that crumbles behind the player which makes backtracking impossible for the moment. And yes, they can still recharge before going across the crumbling platform, but I’m ok with that. The player can then use the Wave Blade to knock out the second forcefield. This switch will be a different Tone though so you can use the Scanner to find out which one it is.

ENDING

After the moving platform, I want to add an enemy encounter for the player to fight through. There’s still a lot of details to add to this scene with the lighting and collision, but the main concept is there. That’s it for this episode. Thanks for watching everyone, and I’ll see you next time!

Resonant Blade website: https://www.resonantblade.com/

Demo: https://gamejolt.com/games/resonant-blade/381677

Bug Reports / Feedback: https://forms.gle/pL6UcpVt2K4GSoo59

Twitter: https://twitter.com/richarddaskas