I meant to get more done this weekend, but I was so tired Saturday I ended up spending 4 hours after work wasting time trying to find ANY information on lighting effects in 2D (which I eventually did find some useful tidbits), then passed out for over 15 hours. However, the good news is, all day today I have been working on the game and it’s hard to say where to begin!
I started off with some fixes to combat code, as promised. A few timing fixes and some logic fixes and most of the holes in the conversion between attack/defend/dash are gone. I also added the damage formula to the enemies and gave them important statistics like Arashi. One more thing I did was enhance damage numbers slightly by making critical hits a larger number for more effect, it took awhile to get the placement just right (I also fidgeted with the original damage numbers so they centered more properly). And finally added some flashes and color coding to Arashi’s combat states, so if she’s doing a dash attack or counter attack, she flashes brightly. There’s some debug code for now for parry (red) and vulnerable (blue) but they may end up staying in some capacity.
After that, as seen in the screenshot here, I finally tackled the first major submenu: Character. I actually need to rename the 2nd submenu now because of the way I designed this screen, but that’s for next time. Adding the status submenu finally forced me to create the inventory database, but as you can see it works pretty ideally. I even made some nice icons for the premeire items. There’s 1 weapon slot, 11 armor/accessory slots, and 4 special items (used with the B Button in-game). Special items also have passive traits that automatically work while they are the active item, and can be cycled from in-game without using the menu. The Rune of Life (at the bottom) has a passive regen trait, so Arashi can gradually recover hit points, and yes, I coded all that too. There are 3 other Runes and other special items like food and healing items, and maybe more if time allows. Also, you are allowed to turn items off, which basically converts the B button to Arashi’s personal sword technique that improves with the story (remember, she is just a trainee at the start).
If you can’t tell I’m excited, there’s a lot more in this screenshot than I can fully explain and visually can’t be shown such as the selectors, though it’s not complete just yet, I still have to make the button commands for each equipment slot and display their help text at the bottom. Well, I’ve written and spoiled enough, I sometimes wonder if it’ll do me much good to screenshot every aspect of the game, but I do want to share as much progress as I make 🙂 Until next time!
