Oh.

This is a major update which begins the long process of a total game rewrite.

And a long process it as been. I won't lie, I almost gave it up a few times. I put this off over a year and a half before doing much of anything. A lot happened during that time: I lost all the files on my computer, it's currently 6:25 AM on Christmas morning as I'm writing this, and I traveled to another state and found a new hobby to become invested in.

Long story short: Mite Redux is ON. I just wrapped up a 3 hour work session on it, in fact! (Bad sleep activate) 

As I mentioned, I lost everything from my PC a while ago, which was the first reason I almost gave up. After a while though I realized it would probably be better to start entirely (mostly) from scratch. With MAD-R1 I had intended to use the same project file but "clean it up", which I realized almost immediately was going to be an uphill battle. The hill in question being more like a wall of molasses about to topple backward over me.  But now I want to show off some game things! Keep in mind that this is no where near done and everything in here could change by the time it's ready. Maybe it'll be a single pixel difference or maybe Gru has successfully stolen the moon and placed it in someone's pocket. Only time will tell.

MEDIC!

Here is a (totally unfinished) look at how our little doctor man, named, well, Doc, sees the world. He sits behind his desk waiting for you (Smarty!) to waddle on over to him asking for heals. See those little barriers with eyes on them? Doc can't! In fact, as far as he's concerned those are the walls themselves. What's with those pluses in front of the desk? We'll that'll be a trigger to let ol' Doc's poor eyes know that you've requested some assistance.

Health is no longer reset by finishing a stage. You can find snacks or medical items in a stage to heal, but any lost health is kept missing until it's either healed by another medical item or Doc. To make things worse, you can become crippled, reducing your movement speed to nearly half of your sprinting speed... oh yeah, that reminds me!

Movement

In Mite, the player moved at a fixed speed. That will be different start in Mite Redux (working title). Your base speed has actually be cut in half, BUT, you can now hold shift to sprint, moving even faster than you did in the original game! But watch your step... there could be a bear trap waiting to snap your poor little legs and preventing you from sprinting, or even walking normally!

HUD

I'm not going to sugarcoat it: the HUD in Mite sucked. Hard. In Redux I've taken the time to create an easily readable display. No stock progress bar with colors that made no sense (because I couldn't figure out how to change them)! This display includes a general "face window" showing your overall status, a green health bar because it couldn't be any other way, a yellow bar for stamina, money count, and a weapon icon with its name and ammo loaded/maximum shown. Wow! Isn't that the bare minimum?!

Not pictured: radar tool showing enemies, objectives, and exit.

Stages and Story

Level progression

Find it boring that Mite was an aimless game where you only had to kill zombies to progress? I didn't at the time but hey, I wanna do better! In Redux you'll start with a somewhat interactive tutorial that isn't just text outside of a wall you can barely see, only if you shine a light on it and even then some of it is still under walls you're not even supposed to see are there in the first place oh god why is it so bad end the pain please end the pain!

Eyeball theory

Vision: what is it? Gone are the days of fog, banished long ago in the ancient stages of Mite development. Instead of trying to make some complicated system to hide details in levels I've gone with the much easier-to-read method of having walls still cast shadow, but there's no fog or a flashlight (on every level!) to make the game impossible to see at times.

Enemies and Hazards

Baddies and variation

...features including: intelligent zombie pathfinding...

While "intelligent" pathfinding hasn't been directly added at this time, I've begun laying the foundation for enemies to be able to do more than simply walk straight at you forever. The basic zombie has even received some minor changes! They can now lose sight of you and forget you ever existed if you're out of their direct line of sight for too long. Be aware that they can still feel with what's left of their brain and will become aggressive toward you if you bump in to them even while out of sight!

With that said, I've also put in motion more types of enemies than the two (technically three, the Sprinter appears after the bank stage but has no AI) present in Mite. I believe all of these may make another appearance in Redux, but potentially changed up or under another name. I've also planned a stationary turret enemy for a later stage.

Traps

Like walking straight into a place, not having to worry about your feet being blown off by a mine or your legs crushed by a bear trap? Well I had to be the one to tell you, but those things have BOTH been added! As mentioned before, bear traps can cripple you if triggered. Mines will momentarily beep before exploding, seriously injuring and crippling anything that survived nearby. Enemies can also trigger these traps for you though. Get creative!

Killstreaks

Gonna be honest, these probably won't be coming back. They were fun, granted, but kind of won't fit in anymore. A main reason they were added was to help combat situations where you'd run out of ammo and be stuck behind a barricade. The introduction of the Falcon with its endless reserve eliminates this problem at the source. Speaking of...

Weapons

WEAPONS!!!!!!! Who doesn't love these?! The Falcon will be a starting weapon which you immediately have access to in the introduction. While I'm not entirely sure how I want weapons to be given to the player I do know that I want to have an automatic rifle of some kind, potentially a flamethrower, rocket launcher, and maybe a grenade. No promises though.

Crosshair

I could probably have mentioned this in the HUD section, but we're here so too late. The crosshair in Mite could sometimes be hard to see or hard to find if you lost track of it. This has been remedied in Redux using a method I actually use for my cursor in Terraria as well as just enlarging the sprite a bit.  The result is a dark outline with a bright color on the inside. This looks much better I think, and is also worlds easier to see compared to the original, which I had almost ended up reusing at first.

Sheeeeesh. I've been writing for an hour now and I'm actually getting really tired, which I'm sure has nothing to do with the 4 hours of sleep I got and is all due to typing so much. I feel like I'm writing a paper for school again. Anyway, I'm writing this partly to keep track of updates,  partly because I like coming back to re-read these things over time, and mostly to inform anyone who is wanting to know what happened to the project what the deal is!

In closing: I've learned a lot since I first start making Mite with free time during an HTML class in high school. Redux is so much different internally, making it easier for me to develop, as well as externally, making it more fun to PLAY!

Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and happy new year.

- L