Like most people, 2020 was not kind to me. Not only did development slow down, but our animator actually got COVID too (and recovered!) The reason for the slow development was because I haven't been able to find a dedicated programmer for the project, so I've had to continue on my own. That said, things are finally looking up as the content for the new demo is nearly complete. You can swing, you can fight, and there are activities to complete, it's all down to polish and art now.

The city size we were going for was big. Really big. Like, that's how big it's gonna be in the actual game big. So, to save on time, make things easier, and to better focus, we've significantly scaled down the map size to be just a little bigger than the original VR demo's map. Even though there's less space to move around in, there also won't be nearly as much repetition in the environment, and more importantly, hundreds and hundreds fewer city blocks to make.

We've decided to add in a short story mission to act as a tutorial. This means there are cutscenes and the ability to talk to specific NPCs. You'll do some swinging, some fighting, and then a special activity that you'll just have to see for yourself. The cutscenes haven't been animated yet, so maybe I'll show a preview next time.

The combat system has been completed, though you'll only get the full experience in third-person. There are multiple types of enemies with different behaviors, and multiple ways to take them down. You can use melee attacks, throw things at people, throw people at people, and cover them in gum so they can't get away.

Third-person gameplay gets all the fancy animations, but is functionally the same in VR as well. You just can't kick people, or do dodge rolls and stuff like that.

I had to figure out enemy AI and this whole combat system on my own, and I think it turned out pretty well, but of course, we're still working on it. There are three gadgets available to use, as well as different flavors of chewing gum that have different effects on gameplay. However, not all of it quite finished enough to show off here, so hopefully I can show more in the next update. There are lots of new things we've added into the game, but these were the most important ones that happened. Here's a little slice of swinging gameplay to close out this update:

Apologies for going ​9 months without an update, but there wasn't really anything major to say until now. Our animator got a job at Treyarch, which set us back a little bit. However, the replacement has been doing a great job so far. So, here's what's been going on lately:

I know you never actually got to play with the old model, but now we have new one! She's slightly redesigned, has a much better face, and she's prepared for all kinds of animation.

Gumlines can now physically and visibly wrap around buildings and other objects. Not only that, but you can swing back around and unwrap it back to how it started as well.

Finally, some real content! You can now race from checkpoint to checkpoint and score a medal for your best time on various courses throughout the city. If you're really good, you can get the Gumball medal for beating my own personal best time.

We've finally begun work on enemy AI! It's still early days, but eventually combat will be good, I swear.

With races done and combat making its way to completion, so too is the overhauled demo itself. After combat, the last thing to do is finish modeling the city, which takes time. While that's going on, we'll be adding in some extra content to make it more worthwhile to play.

And don't worry, we're not abandoning VR:

Until next time! Hopefully not another 9 months...