Weekly Update – June 23, 2023

It was another demanding work week. 

• Balanced tier 1 enemies and starting classes (Knight, Ranger, Wizard). These enemies and classes will be the only ones available in the upcoming play test. I broke up the balancing into six tasks: one task for each class attacking various entities, and one task for various enemies attacking each class. I started by setting what I believed to be the correct values in a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet also contained the net damage formula and resulting number of hits to kill. I then tested each combination to verify that the net damage matched the value in the spreadsheet and that the number of hits to kill felt appropriate.
• Distinct Crystal properties. There are four different types of crystals – blue, red, purple, and green. Crystals previously only differed in appearance and served no purpose other than blocking the player’s path. Crystals now have distinct physical materials that vary in hardness. When crystals are destroyed, they now leave behind shards that can be picked up and used for different purposes.
• Coins carried by actors automatically calculated from a total value. Originally, actors could possess a random number of gold coins. I’ve since added silver and copper coins that are worth different amounts. I didn’t want to add a variable for every coin type (actually, three variables per coin type – chance of having the coin type, minimum quantity, and maximum quantity), so I renamed the gold field “Money” and wrote a simple algorithm to determine the types and quantities of coins that add up to the money value.
• Random chance and min/max quantity for starting items. Every starting item an actor has can now have a random chance of being added and a random quantity within a specified range. The initial motivation for this was to enable random quantities of different coin types. Then I found a better solution (see previous bullet) and didn’t need this functionality. However, I left it in incase I have a future need for an actor to randomly carry a specific item or a variable quantity of that item.
• Minor improvements
  • Dead adventurers, pots, crates, and barrels now have random gold and items.
  • Random map elements are no longer placed in the starting and ending rooms. Having the player start the level in certain random room types such as Barracks, Monster Lair, Treasure Room didn’t make sense and could result in the player’s immediate death.
  • When entities are created using the developer console, the entities are no longer placed in occupied cells. I did this for convenience. 
• Bug fixes
  • When an actor moves to a new cell while another actor is shooting at the actor, the projectile lands in the cell that the targeted actor moved from.
  • When the player opens a door, enemies move away from the player. 
  • Inventory Panel slightly overlaps Inspect Panel when both are shown.
  • Going back up stairs doesn’t work in test mode.

Next week, I will definitely have more free time. I’ll be concentrating on the dozen known defects that must be fixed before the play test. Also, combat stats and map generation need a bit of fine-tuning for the play test.