It’s been a while since I showed a boss, so let’s do that! Here’s a new Rival machine: the Semi Core!

You can actually see him in there! I try to show him inside the Cores whenever I can in Bleed 2. It makes it clear he’s piloting them, plus he gets some more character! I’m happy with how his maniacal laugh turned out.

I’m showing some of his attacks, but since they’re all displayed in large gifs they’re after the break!

At first glance, the Semi Core just looks like a big truck. But, it has hatches that slide back to reveal heavy weaponry! The rear hatch hides missile launchers that fire during the whole fight. On easier difficulties, they only fire occasional bursts.

The front hatch has a laser cannon that locks on and fires…

…and the bottom hatches reveal thrusters that can be used to smush Wryn flat. The Semi Core has a couple other attacks, but I’m not gonna spoil all the fun!

The thruster/smushing attack required a bit of problem-solving on my part. Normally if Wryn is squished against a surface with no space around her, her collision detection bugs out and ejects her outside the level — obviously not desired. The easiest way to handle this is to make squishes instant-kills. HOWEVER!! There are no one-hit kills in Bleed 2, so I got creative.

The ceiling in this section of the game is actually a bit higher than it appears! A special blocking volume is used as a section of ceiling, usually flush with the rest of the level. When the Semi Core smashes against it, it raises to allow just enough space for Wryn to move and not be ejected. If her head is against the blocking volume, and she’s standing on the ground, the game knows she’s being squished and damages her.

Fun fact, you can see the tile shapes of two vehicles that are totally overlapped by the Semi Core — that’s where vehicles arrive when you destroy the boss, so you have something to stand on and continue the level. They’re also totally overlapped by the truck that was here originally (before the Semi Core smashed it out of the way) so you’d never even know they were there (unless I did something silly like show you on a blog. Oops.) Just me doing my best to be sneaky!

That’s all for this week, hope you enjoyed seeing some new gameplay!