Big milestone! I’ve advanced the whole engine flow enough so that we now have both physics and attacks working! They kind of go together.

First off: Physics. The new engine is more advanced than the previous one, as it’s made to handle more colliders and both 2D and 3D at the same time. 2D colliders are compatible with 3D and vice-versa, although it’s not what I would recommend to use lmao

At the current moment, it’s at mostly parity with the previous engine. While I could finish it right this week, I know people will want to use the new Castagne for the upcoming Indie FG jam this april, so I’ll be postponning it for a bit to focus on the editor.

Something that is of note here is the interface: the collider functions have changed. While I know this adds additional work for the porting of projects, after tests I’ve seen that this way is a bit better.

• Colbox and Hurtbox now work with an horizontal center, and a base and height. This is a better way to adjust colliders that are close to the character imo. Colbox(0,100,0,500) (equivalent to Colbox(100, 500)) will produce a box going from -100 to 100 horizontally, and 0 to 500 vertically, so it’s a simple way to add one to characters.
• Hitbox now works with width and height from the lower back corner. Hitbox(0, 100, 0, 500) (equivalent to Hitbox(100, 500)) will produce a box going from 0 to 100 horizontally, and 0 to 500 vertically. It reflects the more forward-facing nature of hitboxes, and thus allow faster set up.

I’ve set it up this way because it also becomes easier to move colliders around from code, as instead of being coordinates it’s now origin and dimension. This makes operations easier, except shrinking a collider forward which is the same difficulty as before. Do note that the order of parameters stays coherent: it’s dimension by dimension, and the shortcuts are (width, height) and (width, base, height) for each function, covering most cases.

This is not fixed in stone yet, so you can discuss it on the forum. Something to note is that I’m planning on adding drag-and-drop in the editor for these, so it should be easier to set up once the editor is more featured.

Some changes on the Attack module front too, although this one is quite tamer. It’s just a slight rework of the attack events, which work as such:

• At the start, OnAttacked is called on the defender. This is the first event, where most attack overrides will happen. This is before the blocking computation, so you can potentially decide to get hit or not, which is a new ability.
• After that, either OnAttackHit or OnAttackBlocked is called on the attacker depending on the result. The rest of the overrides happen here, and that’s where the attacker gets his meter and whatnot.
• Finally, OnGetHit or OnBlocking is called on the defender. This is where you apply the changes to HP and the like.
• In the case of a clash, only OnAttackClashed is called on both clashers.

All attack events share two properties: the target is the opponent for the attack, and Attack. allows you access to the current attack instead of preparation. This is intended to allow more flexibility in case of multiattacks and to enable more behaviors. Do note however, that the engine doesn’t store recieved/inflicted attacks anymore so you can’t refer to them outside of these events.

There’s more upcoming changes, although this post is long enough and I’m deciding on the details. Something to note, in this whole rework, is that the engine now makes more assumptions about your game, one of the key ones being the ground. The previous Castagne didn’t really care, but this one assumes that being grounded or airborne is a fundamental caracteristic of the game. I like that because you can ignore it if you don’t care, but it allows better integration, which really helps many cases. This is a throughline of the updates.

My next step is to advance the flow module, and to advance the editor workflow. I want the engine to be ready for the jam, although if you want to use it you’ll need strong basics with the previous one. Please get in touch, as this will probably be a closed beta, as it has enough caveats that I don’t want it available without supervision, and instead focus on a polished release. See you next update!