Devlog 5 – AI Uprising Begins

Enemy AI – Now Featuring Basic Instincts

We originally thought one programmer could handle all the enemy AI. That was cute. After realizing how much work it actually was, we put two programmers on the task. With the help of Unreal’s State Tree plugin, our goblins finally learned how to wander, chase, attack, and even investigate the last known location of the player. Big brain energy.

So far, only the warrior enemy is working. The archer is still on hold because giving it proper ranged behavior (like keeping distance and positioning smartly) is a bit trickier. Baby steps.

Life and Death (Mostly Death)

We’ve added proper death mechanics for both the player and enemies. When someone dies, they now flop over dramatically using physics simulation. Right now, it's a placeholder ragdoll effect, but it does the job. No respawning or reviving yet—death is final. For now.

Level Streaming

We implemented level streaming to make sure we don't run into each other whilst working on files and cause merge conflicts

Movement And Camera

We've finally polished the movement a bit and added the camera movement to the game, this way the players should always stay in frame!
Whilst the head's movement kept being difficult we also spotted a major error in our movement code which has now also been patched.

HUD & Health Bars – UI With a Pulse

Health bars are finally in. The player has one on-screen, and enemies get floating health bars above their heads when they’re damaged. It’s basic but does the trick. We'll replace it with fancier UI assets later, but for now, it’s good enough to help you know when you're losing (or winning).

Animations & Character Rigging – We Gave Them Life

This week, the environment artists (aka us) got hands-on with rigging and animations. Most base animations are now working—except for one slightly cursed torso goblin who insists on doing his own thing. He’s trying, okay?

We also gave the goblins proper textures so they actually look like goblins and not weird green blobs. They're really starting to look like the misfit knight squad they were meant to be.

A World in Progress – From Blocks to Battlefields

We’ve started replacing placeholder block-outs with actual environment assets. Camps are popping up, enemies have places to patrol, and the level is slowly starting to feel like a real game.

The warrior goblin now has animations for attacking, getting stunned, taking damage, and yes—dying dramatically. Combat still needs balancing, but at least now you can hit things. That’s progress, right?

Sound – Now Featuring Footsteps and Fury

Our audio wizard has been working on bringing the game world to life with ambiance and combat sounds. Soon we’ll hear footsteps crunching on dirt and grass. Which reminds us... we should probably add some grass.

Art – Rigged and Textured

Our main characters have finally been completed! They are ready for animations which really bring the game to life. We've needed to change our rigging workflow for a more stable approach, it took some time to figure out but now the other characters should be easier to get moving.

Team Workflow – Slightly Less Chaos

We’ve finally got a better system for working together in the same level without everything breaking. Coordinating in the persistent level is smoother now, which is pretty important if we actually want to finish the game sometime this decade.

What’s Next?

With animations, sounds, and enemy behaviors finally coming together, we’re probably getting close to the polish phase. Or maybe we’ll get distracted making flashy VFX. Who knows? We’re goblins, not planners.