Update #6: Combat system polishing, assets detailing and parallax background

Fellow adventurers, the time when you will have to grab the sword and defend what is rightfully yours is slowlyyy approaching. The journey is long for sure, but each step, even the smallest one, brings closer the day when finally the experience will be brought to life and hopefully some of you will enjoy the product of many sleepless nights I spent coding, modelling, writing, etc.

From the perspective of the software engineering the project is maturing. Finally, the number of bugs I am finding in combat system is diminishing, giving me a bit more time to work on other tasks, which move the game experience forward. Among the newly implemented features (just a couple more left from initially defined plan, since 'feature-freeze' is in place I add nothing new to the task list), the most notorious one is probably the revitalization (because it was there before, but was disabled) of the parallax effect in the background. The assets are still not fully compatible (different color gammas and resolution are quite noticeable), but the implementation is generic enough to integrate the new backgrounds as soon as I will have something suitable. 

Some funny moments when implementing parallax :D (by mistake used whole texture from atlas instead of some of its portions)

I finally managed to find some time to improve the level of assets detailing, which in my opinion brings a bit more vivid medieval atmosphere into the game. Indeed there are still textures missing, but some of those small details would not be achievable only by adding appropriate textures.

The building process was improved. Now the hitbox of the constructions is mutable and depends on several variables which define the state of the building (direction the building is facing, if the door is open or closed, construction status). This feature allows to be more accurate when determining the location where the building can be built. Additionally, the preview component is now correctly calculating the direction of the building, taking into account the position of the main unit.

Fixed a couple of 'funny' issues, which were occurring when fading effect was being triggered by death timer (once unit is dead it's body remains on the ground for certain period of time before fading). Certain circumstances were causing the effect to happen on the whole screen rather on the body of the dead unit, causing a complete blackout.

Last but not least, currently I am interacting with an artist, who also has some experience in game design. We are trying to find out if there is a common ground for possible collaboration. More updates are coming on that matter soon.

For now, I wish you all the best!