Phew. Although I will be tuning the art assets and hopefully commissioning a few artists (obviously since I’m still using a LOT of placeholder art just to see how things work, especially for Arashi and Ket), the first room is almost done. Like I said before, though it may look simple it’s really demonstrating the entire core of the game in one shot aside from combat. Also you will probably notice that Ket (also using placeholder art from 2 years ago) is now actually on the screen, and he is currently only programmed to follow Arashi (his AI is pretty simple but give me a break, it’s only been an hour since he existed!). At least it works, and Ket’s programming can be pretty much done entirely independent of the rest of the game as he’s self-sufficient… one of the first times I actually started with the true object-oriented mindset.
What is Ket’s purpose as far as gameplay? I want him to assist Arashi but I don’t want him to do all the fighting for her. I feel Ket’s primary goal is defense, so if the player is standing still with Ket in the party, he will throw up a psychic shield to help block some attacks (I realize that 99% of you have no idea who or what Ket even is, bear with me). If the player is actively attacking a monster, he will join in and assist the combo attacks. Ket’s a very powerful character storywise, which is why his original design was only to bring Arashi to safety when defeated since he would be able to recover her easily. The player does have the option of dismissing him at any time by talking to him which will be more in line with the original concept, but in a naturally progressing story there’s next to no reason Ket won’t insist on going with Arashi let alone her telling him to leave.
I’m bracing myself because almost the entire game’s base programming is in place (the major thing that’s left is portable light sources… notice that placeholder lantern on the table?), but I need to do another hefty round of optimization and fixing soon, along with transplanting almost the entire Level-loading and drawing infrastructure. Though I have added containers with full functionality, I still need to allow the player to place items from their backpack into the container (which is why you see the container menu so far to the left, I’m making room for the backpack inventory). In retrospect I probably should have made the player’s backpack one of these containers as well… if there’s time I will probably shift that over. Less code to sift through later on when the game is near done and unexpected bugs pop up is a good thing.
Things will only get better from here on!
