For some reason or another, Leshy is one of my most popular mods with over 4,000 downloads on the Steam Workshop.
Leshy has visual identifiers above his hud. Players can see which mask is ready to use and how many cards they currently have. This was done with conditional statements that measured player states.
While an attempt was made to match the art style of Rivals of Aether, my skill wasn't quite there yet. Leshy is one of the tallest characters in the game and some of his animations look a little stiff. The experience of making him taught me the beauty of simplicity. My later mods have been much simpler in design, although maintain their level of detail.
Leshy is the main antagonist of the indie game Inscyption. I worked on this mod on and off during classes until I set a deadline for myself to release during a Workshop Community Presentation. This mod greatly expanded my understanding of variables and GameMakerLanguage as a whole.
The main programming hurdle was recreating a system of resource management that was present in Inscryption. Leshy can "charge" his squirrel cards to sacrifice them for better cards. It was a creative exercise to properly translate a character from a card game into a fighting game.
As one of my more popular characters, there was a small demand for balance changes. Here is a change list of his second update which was made to make him more fluid and more competitively viable. Changes were well-received.
