This month I’ve been focusing almost entirely on programming some additional basic mechanics as well as polishing/fixing some things that were already implemented (with some necessary sprite animations done along the way).
Melee Attack
First up was adding a melee attack. While I haven’t done the complete animations for the attack yet, the functionality of the attack is complete and Nixie can now slash with his antennas in 4 directions. I also started adding some effects, such as having the enemy flash white and spawn a small particle explosion on impact and death. At this point I tried adding some preliminary sound effects for when the enemies take damage. Nixie can also “pogo” off of enemies when attacking downward in the air:
Shooting Animations
Next I put some time into polishing the shooting ability and animations. I had already added the ability for Nixie to shoot, but with only one animation finished, it did not look or feel right at all. I created animations for Nixie shooting up, down, and while ducking (I still need to create midair shooting animations), but it’s looking a lot better now. I also re-used the small particle burst effect and now have it spawn at the “gun barrel” for an added effect:
Player Damage Animation & Effects
I spent a little time working on how it looks/feels when Nixie takes damage. I’ll probably add some additional effects to this, such as screen shake effect.
Ladders
And last but not least, I fixed the ladders. First I started with a climbing animation using references from Megaman X of course:

I put an unreasonable amount of time into getting the ladders to work properly. I had previously done a tutorial video that explained how to get ladders to work but despite copying the code exactly, it just *didn’t* work right. I ended up tearing it apart and programming my own ladders (which might be the first time I attempted to program a feature with no direct walk through on how to do it, so that’s kind of a good feeling!)
Other Stuff
I did some other stuff this month as well, such as hooking up and configuring an XBOX controller so I don’t have to play the game with the keyboard anymore as well as mess around with a “Symphony of the Night” ghost effect that I will probably using sparingly. Overall it was a very productive month on the coding side of things!
Watch the full video dev log for more: