Minor update v055a

So, it's been a few weeks of development, and so I think it's time for another release and another devlog!

Smaller update this time around as the last couple of weeks have been dedicated to some refactoring behind the scenes, but there are a few cosmetic updates that are worth mentioning.

The obvious changes

First and most obvious is the new Bam7 Games logo by Jason Terriffic! [link] I'm chuffed to bits with the job they did with this, and I feel it adds a certain professionalism that I don't deserve in any way shape or form.

The other big and noticeable change is that I've added some music, it's all royalty free stuff from ineedmusic.co, which I got off a humble bundle. Volume controls should work for changing the volume around, but let me know if it blows out anyone's speakers.

Refactoring

So for those who don't know, refactoring is a programming term referring to when a change doesn't alter the functionality of a piece of code but does reorganise it, usually to make it easier to maintain. In this case, I've been refactoring the code for both the player and the zombie to be less brittle and easier to expand. In the past I'd used a single massive if statement with a load of ugly flags for state management, which made for brittle code that broke whenever I tried to improve it. I've refactored both the player and the zombie to use state machines instead.

There's a bunch of tutorials on how to do this on youtube and across the web, this solution was cobbled together out of a few. Seems to work though, and will make it easier to add more states.

Bug fixes

The refactoring brought up a couple of bug fixes and weird possible states around zombies freezing and the like, so I've fixed those.

I've also fixed a particularly nasty issue where returning to the first room would cause the initial cutscene to re-execute while the player character is standing right in front of a zombie.

The road ahead

So, what's next? The original asset pack from Luiz Melo for Death Knight 2 contains a few other states I want to include, particularly crouching and wall sliding/jumping. So that'll be my focu over the next couple of weeks!

Enjoy the game, I'm always open to feedback.