After a welcome 2-week holiday, we are ready to dive back into our game. After such a break, we couldn't help but see our whole game in a new light... literally, because our artists decided to use their free time to add some lighting to the entire scene. Strangely enough, the light was in a different place every time the project was opened, a problem that took a little bit of struggle to figure out. However, after some trial and error we figured to keep them all in their place.

With the added atmosphere of the lighting, it was also time to add some creepiness to the games mood in the form of enemies hiding in the dark... or being an embodiment of darkness itself. The ever present sharks have gained several more animations to work with, including swimming, attack and well, dying. In addition, our artists worked on sprites for more creatures, such as the harmless Goldfish and the volatile Pufferfish, both of which are not in the game just yet, but are ready to be implemented.

In addition, we gave the present sharks the ability to navigate the level and track down the submarine. Rocks and other obstacles with block their path and the will only go in for an attack when the submarine is close enough for them to sense. Once they reach the sub, the will attack the closest room, going back and forward to give the player the opportunity to react; how considerate of them.

The final enemy we added, is the Tentacle Horror itself. Although this creature is composed of only a few simple parts, when all the sprites are combined, it becomes the manifestation of the chaotic nightmares hiding in the depths. Also, it's the only creature in the game that has eyes. Creepy!

With all these animations available, we decided it was time to actually attach them to our characters as well. Up until this point, they had been static sprites, floating around in an eternal frozen state. We ran into a few problems while implementing the animation system, mostly conserning the timing and alignment of all the sprites. We had to add an extra few hours to our workload, simply overlaying all animations we had made before and giving them the same origin point to avoid the mess you see below.

Last but not least, we added a few extra gameplay mechanics as well. Most import is the fuel system. In the back of the submarine, there is an Engine that slowly runs out of fuel, spending more the faster the ship goes. Engineer has to refill the fuel tank once in a while, simply by converting Coral Fragments collected by Diver into energy-rich purple goo. We considered adding an extra fuel tank item, but with oxygen tanks, ammo boxes and health packs already becoming a thing, we though this would probably too much cargo laying around the ship.