--- DevDiary ---

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- 2024/10/26 -

This week, I started working on the third boss.

As mentioned earlier, bosses in Sunrise Doll come in pairs: a regular boss and a "peer" boss alternate each other. With the boss of stage 5 being a regular, and the boss of stage 10 being a "peer", the boss of stage 15 - the third one - is going to be a regular.

The rough sketch of this boss has been in the works since forever ago, though for the longest time the actual work kept being shelved, because I could not figure out the exact pattern of the boss' behavior to be implemented in the game. This week I finally wrote a design document for it, similar to what I've done for the first boss. The mental image of fighting this boss is now much more solid than before, and I do believe that it won't take too long to add it to the game in a playable state.

The visuals of the boss had been undecided for far longer than its mechanics, though as of this week those are solved too. The basic sprites for the third boss are done, and the slight variations that may be required by some mechanics will take minutes to be created on the spot when needed.

One of the more time-consuming things about how this boss works will be the addition of slight changes to how Pawn is controlled. Thankfully, her controls are coded as an easily editable library rather than as a large slab of hardcoded switches, so it's only a matter of adding new stuff to her arsenal and making sure the gateway to said stuff is properly triggered on this boss and this boss only.

I plan to keep this boss under wraps until the game is released in full. The only spoiler I will share is that this boss involves heavy use of Splitters.

Useful little entity.

The way I programmed them into the game has turned out to be quite beneficial to the design of this boss. Right now the only question I have is whether the arena needs one or two Splitters to make the encounter more fun. This will be answered, hopefully, when I come down to implementing the playable version of the third boss.