Luanti Game Jam: Day 14

Day 14

I made two new levels, 11 and 12. Both of them involve shooting through a small horizontal opening, with the second being a more complicated version. I might change level 11 tomorrow, who knows.

I cleaned up the reflector code, and added a mineable reflector for future levels. I ultimately decided that the speed of the arrow that shot the reflector shouldn't affect the speed of the reflected arrow. It was ultimately too complicated and frustrating, so I set it to a fixed speed.

I improved health regeneration. Now, when you take damage, there is a half-second delay before healing at a rate of one health point per 1/4 second. This new regeneration system feels much better.

I tried making a heart texture within my personal constraints of "only the Libresprite default palette", but it looked ugly, even when attempting 12×12 as well as my normal 8x8. Instead, I decided to hide the health bar entirely, which I will eventually replace with a red vignette when your health is below a certain amount.

I worked on the arena for the boss fight. I'm having my doubts about it, but I think I can pull it off. I could probably make the boss fight with one or two uninterrupted days, all gameplay mechanics within two or three, and crank out levels the rest of the time.

I think I've got a plot in my head:

• Normal testing
• Testers try to have a robot design a level, but then it escapes and starts taking over the lab in the background (mineable reflector level)
• In all the chaos, you accidentally get redirected to an anti-gravity testing sequence (anti-gravity levels)
• Finish those and get back to the normal tracks, and in the final few levels reach and defeat the robot

Other bug fixes/cleanup:

• More inventory improvements!

Checklist from yesterday

• [x] Make one, if not two, more levels
• [ ] Potentially work on endgame (boss fight)
• [ ] Anti-gravity preparation
• [ ] Node that toggles anti-gravity
• [x] Add mineable reflectors and clean up reflector code
• [x] Remove other mineable blocks during transitions/resets
• [ ] Add a GUI for going back to previous levels
• [ ] (CHANGED MY MIND) Improve the hearts/health texture
• [ ] Small code cleanup

Overall plans

For this last week, the "Plans for tomorrow" and "Overall plans" checklist will be merged.

[ ] Make more levels!! Level ideas:

• [ ] Mineable reflector introduction level
• [ ] Deja-vu: The same section gets repeated multiple times (maybe in anti-gravity)

• [ ] Work on endgame (boss fight)
• Timed
• Credits screen

[ ] Anti-gravity preparation

• [ ] Node that toggles anti-gravity
• [ ] Changing arrow gravity on the fly

• [ ] Add a GUI for going back to previous levels
• [ ] Add a red vignette when health is lower than a certain amount (e.g. 15/20 HP)
• [ ] Add dialogue when needed

[ ] Code cleanup

• [ ] "last_arrows" remnants from reflectors

Might do (non-breaking)

• [ ] Combine the reflector nodes into one node
• [ ] Reuse the same reflector textures for both regular and mineable reflectors
• [ ] Improve the hearts/health texture
• [ ] Optional mod to add music
• Boss: potentially Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 4 "Italian", movement IV. Saltarello presto, in some retro/chiptune form if possible
• [ ] Fix item adding/removing to focused slot (maybe; I have no idea how to fix this!!)
• [ ] An achievement system

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More information about the jam can be found here:

Luanti Game Jam 2025

The code is on Codeberg:

Codeberg repository