Key Events
• Added Disengage/Bash
• Added Abilities Over Time
• Added New Class

As planned, I was able to continue programming over the last two weeks and add some more features and a new character to the demo. I also spent a little time working on some new character concepts, battlegrounds, and animation preparation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yv_7GOVxA1E&feature=youtu.be

Added Ability Points

Each character will have different abilities, ranging from basic attack to ultimate attacks, and those abilities will be limited by some form of power or resource management. I don’t know how that’s going to exactly play out, but that doesn’t mean I can’t set up the code for when I do know. Right now, each character starts with a few resource points and each ability requires points to be used. A character regains a point after each turn, so they can save up points by not using stronger attacks during their attack phases.

Added Disengage/Bash

I explained the concept of engagement in the last update, and this time around I added the functionality to disengage. The idea is that some characters will have an ability to disengage from combat without being penalized. In the video example I added a bash ability to the warrior class that does direct damage and also allows him to disengage with the enemy. This could be a useful ability to get him out of a tight spot or to help a friend in need.

Added Abilities over Time/StoneStance

Most actions and effects happen immediately but some will be on a delay. Poison, for example, would be a lingering effect that does most of its damage over consecutive turns and not when it is initially inflicted. I added that type of functionality by implementing the stone stance ability to the warrior class. This ability is a self-buff that the warrior class casts to greatly increase the chances that he blocks an enemy melee attack. It would come in handy if he’s low on life or expecting to get beat down by a bunch of baddies.

Added an Archer

I don’t think the final game is going to have a pure archer type of class, but that’s one of the animations I had on hand and ready to go. It was less important to add a specific game character as it was to see how long it took me to get another character into the game. A few weeks ago I completely re-wrote my character creation classes so that the code is as modular and reusable as possible. Things turned out great and I was able to get the new character in there in less than a day.

Added Abilities to the Archer

For similar reasons as adding the archer class, I wanted to see how long it took me to add new abilities to a class. Again, things went very smoothly with the new code and I was able to add an attack, double attack, and flaming arrow attack to the archer. The animations are pretty cheesy, but adding the real animations will only take a few lines of code when they arrive.

More Artwork

I continued to work with an illustrator and animator on character concepts, level designs, and animations. As far as progress goes, level and character designs are about 40% complete, and the animations are 5-10% complete. Here is some concept work of the first evil character making his way into the game.

Coming Up

It’s hard to plan what’ll be going on over the next couple of weeks, because the enemy is getting married. I’m pretty sure this is where I’ll pull ahead in the competition because he isn’t prepared to handle married life and especially kids if they’re in the immediate future.

With the development time I do get over the next couple weeks, I plan on adding some more core functionality to the game. I’m waiting on the animation artwork to catch up with the programming I’ve done so far and I think I should spend some time on loading/saving game state, dialogue screens, character upgrade screens, and other functionality that will definitely make it into the game.