Fixed the palettes, the dash overlays, and a few other issues that weren't shown in the previous videos.
More importantly: I successfully coded this as both an actual new "move" and new animation, instead of hacking on top of an existing action and reusing the teleport-in animation as is. This is a breakthrough I didn't expect to reach during this particular feature, but it's a welcome one, as it cleared up many questions I had about the process and might open the door for other kinds of custom new moves.
The animation I implemented as a starting point still mostly uses the teleport-in frames. I'm gonna take my time playing with this until I find something I really like.
Now that we're at this point, other secondary decisions come to mind:
- Should I make the player invincible while this happens?
- If so, should it have a cooldown, so you don't abuse the invincibility frames?
- Or should I go in the opposite direction and leave you vulnerable on purpose, so you have to plan when to do it? (Shadow of the Ninja Reborn did this for equipping sub-weapons, and I loved it.)
- Should I add a penalty if you get hit in the process, like leaving you depowered for a few seconds?
For now, I'm satisfied with this being a feature unique to Falcon/Gaea, not all four armors, to incentivize a "use them as you collect them" approach, like in X1–4. I think we can actually get that feeling back now that you can have both armors available at the same time.
As for the Fourth Armor, maybe it gets too damaged after the intro stage, and it only gets repaired after you've collected a certain number of armor parts. 👹
Just thinking out loud. Anyway, I think it's also a good time to do a couple of legit complete playthroughs using this. This will surely give me new ideas in terms of armor ability balance and differentiation, stage selection/item-collecting routes, and specific stage hazards.