Glimmerstalker Effects

The next thing I wanted to work on was getting the basic implementation in for when the Gimmerstalker actually kills the Player. Right now, it was very confusing because the Player input was still active after death and there was no other indication that you were hit. Besides fixing the input, we wanted two main ways to communicate that the Glimmerstalker hit you: A flash and a screech. Basically, like a flashbang went off.

The Flash

I started with the flash. This would be the main indicator (since someone could be playing without sound). I created a simple white overlay that gets shown and then fades out.

It has two configurable settings: the Stay and Fade Durations. The Stay Duration dictates how long it will stay full white before starting to fade. The Fade Duration dictates how long it should take to fade from white to fully transparent. This gives us some flexibility with how the flash is presented.

The Screech

The next thing was the screech. I spent some time searching for some good, free screeching sounds until I found one that seemed to fit. I ended up with an hawk screech because the peacock calls were not quite the right vibe.

While testing it out in game, both Terra and I felt that the screech would be better used as the indicator that the Glimmerstalker has started attacking, instead of when it hit. While not exactly lore-accurate, it definitely felt better for the game (which is ultimately more important). So, I moved the screech to play when the Glimmerstalker enters the Attack state and found a body impact sound to play alongside the flash. This felt much better when playing.

Multi-Glimmerstalker Problem

Also when testing the screeches, I fixed an issue where multiple Glimmerstalkers were stalking/attacking the same character. I had seen it before but it was very apparent once we added in the attack effects. Multiple screeches and flashes was hard to miss! I ended up putting in a temporary fix to not allow the characters to be stalked if they are already being stalked. This prevented the doubling up on Glimmerstalkers but the simplistic check caused issues with the AvoidantStalking behavior, causing them to never re-engage. That'll have to be fixed tomorrow.

The Body

I really liked the overall feel of the death so far but one thing that bothered me was that once the flash faded you were just staring at the same screen it was before the flash. Joking around with Terra, I had the idea of the "Player's" body was laying on the ground. I struck a funny pose, we laughed, and I went back to building out the piece I was working on. However, that thought stuck in my mind.

We already have the Crew rigged and a death animation. What if I could just spawn a Crew body and have it play the animation? So I did!

When the Player gets hit, it now does the following:

1. Disables the Player Input
2. Spawns a Crew body at the Player's location
3. Triggers the Die animation
4. Moves the camera up some
5. Has the camera look at the dead body

All that together looks like this

Overall, I am really pleased with how it turned out!