Wait, Kold is still alive?

Yep!

I've been hacking away at re-implementing Fighter gameplay into the game. Mario is now able to do most of what he could before, with the exception of jumping (I'm gonna rewrite that whole thing) and shielding.

I've got attack animations and sound playback code up and running. I have crouching, taunting, Specials (including root motion during Mario's Up B!) and grabbing up too, and I was even able to FIX A BUG with Smash Attacks, where if I triggered a Smash Attack with Left analog stick + A, and released either the Stick or the A, the move would stay stuck at the end of the charging animation when the combination was held down. I also tinkered with the conditions that tell my Animator controller to either Dash or Forward Smash depending on if A is pressed, and now I've made it A WHOLE LOT EASIER to not accidentally Dash when trying to Forward Smash with Left stick and A! I'll do the same thing with Up Smash and stick jump!

The gameplay loop is mostly the same as it was before, but with a performance boost. Also managed to get AnimCMD frame-timing JUST right, turns out it was as easy as just setting Fixed Timestep to 0.0167 (1/60 frames) in FixedUpdate() and just using that, since FixedUpdate() is not reliant on frame rate. Almost everything is pretty much now delegate- and event-based, with minimal use of Update() (and only a small usage of FixedUpdate()), like I'm doing in the menus. I'm even using OnAnimatorMove() for root motion (like for walking and running), and putting code there for stuff like checking ground angle/type, etc. instead of in a slowUpdate() loop with a whole bunch of if statements running every frame. I get much less lagging and fewer frame drops.

We'll see what happens when I start to test adding more fighters to the match. I hope I'll be able to have up to 8-player Smash like I'm planning. The damage meters should also be super easy to set up with events too.

I'll continue to post updates as I can share them, like I promised. Hey, I can't keep leaving followers in the dark!!

~KV