Author: Jesse Silcott

3/22/2025

Hey everyone, Jesse again! I'm one of the game play developers on Relic of the Hollow King and I focus primarily on all things player related. 

Last week was all about getting the player moving and give you all the first few mechanics in the game, this week was about making sure they worked properly. When adding mechanics like the ability to cast literal magic from your fingertips, it turns out it's pretty important to make sure it's not something that the player can hurt themselves with. More importantly, it's important that the players abilities be cast in the proper direction. I decided in my last post to focus on this moving forward, and I'd happily share how badly it went, and how wonderfully it ended up. 

Changing where the player faced was a huge move for us, it changes entirely how the player can interact with the world around him. It allows the ability to use point and click instead of trying to rotate and make sure you're facing just the right direction. In some cases that split second change can be the difference between being successful and dying at the hands of the evil Lich King. This change also means a far more accurate dashing and dodging system as well. These things massively impact how the player approaches combat, but just as importantly, how the player interacts with the world around themselves. Need to dash to a specific place? Well hovering your mouse over it is a vast improvement over trying to face the right direction, isn't it?

Well this brought some unforeseen problems. First and foremost, it simply broke the magic casting system. As it turns out the engine we're using does not at all like it when the mouse is moving and it's buttons are being clicked at the same time. This however, was the easiest fix, the hardest was making the blend space work while the player rotated independent of the camera.  The player can move in any direction, which means that if the player is moving north, they should be walking forward, right? Well not anymore. Now I have to take into account where the player is facing. Passing that information along was difficult enough as it was. This required an interface. Easy enough to pass through. But it also drastically changed how the player dashed. 

Dashing now had a strange disconnect, as it still felt clunky. But now it, at least felt clunky in the proper direction. This was a pretty easy fix as well. Just had to change how the player braked when doing the dash. And now, after days of struggling to make everything perfect, the player to face the exact direction they're supposed to, there's finally a player that functions normally.

Now it's just time to add some new functionality. To the player. Maybe some new relics?