The latest Shogun Exodus development update introduces a unified procedural locomotion system, centralizing movement animation logic for both player and AI characters through a shared controller. By migrating animation tuning to moddable JSON profiles, locomotion variables such as body bob, lean angles, and pivot anchors are now fully customizable. These structural refinements improve visual consistency across all actor types and resolve previous issues with sprite flipping and head-anchor alignment during runtime.
In addition to the animation overhaul, a new shared visual effects pass implements procedural shadows and dynamic dust particles for all grounded actors. These VFX are synchronized with the locomotion cycle and include adjustable thresholds for opacity, scaling, and burst frequency to ensure a polished look during movement. Finally, the default music track for the base has been updated to better reflect the current atmosphere of the game.
Raw Patch Notes
UPDATE 2026-04-20 #083 - Shared Procedural Locomotion Animation - Added merged `Data/Animation/animation_profiles.json` loading in `GameDB` so locomotion animation tuning and render-group pivot anchors are moddable in the same override path as the other JSON-driven systems. - Added `CharacterAnimationController.gd` and wired it into both Player and BasicAI scenes so player and AI now share one procedural locomotion path instead of duplicating movement animation logic in their gameplay scripts. - Reworked `CharacterVisual.gd` to rebuild render groups around animation-safe pivots, apply runtime pose offsets/scales without fighting facing flips, and resolve head-anchor / click-hit tests from live transformed sprites instead of stale static rectangles. - Extended Player and BasicAI with explicit animation-context helpers so locomotion animation can read shared action/state/profile data while keeping movement ownership in the actor scripts. - Follow-up polish/fixes in the same pass: - Tuned the default locomotion profile to be less exaggerated and slightly slower by reducing body bob/scale extremes and lean angles, while increasing head follow so the head motion reads more clearly. - Fixed horizontal locomotion lean and head counter-rotation so mirrored left-facing characters now lean in the correct visual direction even though `CharacterVisual` uses a flipped root scale for facing. - Mirrored the same tuned values in the controller fallback profile so behavior stays consistent if the animation JSON is missing. - Updated current docs for the new animation data file, runtime flow, and modding hook. - Files: `Data/Animation/animation_profiles.json`, `Autoload/GameDB.gd`, `Scripts/Characters/CharacterVisual.gd`, `Scripts/Characters/CharacterAnimationController.gd`, `Scripts/Player.gd`, `Scripts/BasicWanderAI.gd`, `Scenes/Actors/Player.tscn`, `Scenes/Actors/AI/BasicAI.tscn`, `current-game-setup.txt`, `mod-guide.txt`, `update-log.txt` UPDATE 2026-04-20 #084 - Shared Shadow + Dust VFX Pass - Added shared actor `Shadow` and `Dust` nodes to the player and AI scenes and drove them from `CharacterAnimationController.gd` so both actor types use the same subtle VFX path. - Added procedural shadow texture generation in code and linked the shadow scale/alpha to the locomotion cycle while keeping a faint idle shadow visible at rest. - Added subtle dust bursts on grounded impact moments during faster locomotion using the existing dirt texture, with trigger thresholds and offsets tuned from `Data/Animation/animation_profiles.json`. - Follow-up polish/fixes in the same pass: - Reduced the shared dust particle opacity and then smoothed the burst further by lowering particle explosiveness, fading the node opacity in and out over the burst lifetime, and scaling the dust from a smaller starting size up to full size as the burst plays. - Raised the shared shadow draw order, increased the default shadow alpha range, and widened/tallened the shared shadow ellipse so it reads reliably under the character instead of as a tiny or invisible spot. - Added matching dust fade/scale tuning fields and mirrored the final shadow/dust defaults in the controller fallback path so missing partial animation-profile data does not revert to older behavior. - Updated current docs/modding notes for the animation-profile VFX fields. - Files: `Scripts/Characters/CharacterAnimationController.gd`, `Scenes/Actors/Player.tscn`, `Scenes/Actors/AI/BasicAI.tscn`, `Data/Animation/animation_profiles.json`, `current-game-setup.txt`, `mod-guide.txt`, `update-log.txt` UPDATE 2026-04-20 #085 - Base Music Default Changed - Changed the default music played in the base.
*This is an automated post, using Python and LLMs to summarize game updates. Mistakes, while rare, may happen.
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