Hello guys,

last week update was all about progression. Our little hero - and you with him - start as a novice, a mere squire with no skills and no equip except protective armor he needs. So it makes sense he need to earn the right to wield a sword and wear a shield and other stuff. So as you progress thru the levels, you learn new skills. And each skill is accompanied with an item that represents it and is essential to the narrative. Items and skills are:

• crouching represented by book of wisdom
• double jumping represented by white cape
• protection represented by shield
• attack reresented by sword 

Before this update, you had sword and shield from the beginning (other two items were not existent) which didn't make a lot of sense. It also robbed the players from sense of progression and reward. This is now in the past. This was pretty easy change with a high payoff. Except for the cape - the cape was a nightmare to animate and will probably require another animation pass to make it look good. I could've used cloth simulation, but oh well, maybe next time.

Speaking of animation, I added jump animation. Before the character would just flap his legs as he was still running, only in the air. It didn't looked good. Now he jumps and also uses a looping fall animation - it doesn't matter now if he falls from a jump or from a cliff, the animation will play until he touches the ground. Pretty easy, pretty neat outcome.

This update also brings a couple of bugfixes and little optimization on Ambient Occlusion. 

Next update will hold - finally - death animation. Right now the player just stops and it's not really sexy. Since the game is pretty light-hearted I don't want my hero to just die and be respawned. That's morbid and also don't fit the feel of the game. Instead, the hero is saved by higher entity in nick of time by magical barrier and teleported to the beginning of the level. The higher entity overseers the whole journey of our little knight and will be elaborated more on in-game and in future devlogs.

Thanks for listening, don't forget to comment on my game and follow me on Twitter for daily updates from development.

Bye!

Petr