I had more available time than last week, but not by much. Still, I was able to get priorities 1 and 2 from last week done.
- Finalized and implemented click cell logic. I thought I had this completely figured out a couple of weeks ago, but I ran into complications. The point-and-click control scheme uses rules to determine what the player character does when clicking on a particular cell, based on the contents of the cell and the items selected in the quick switch slots. The purpose of this control scheme is to make the game both intuitive and efficient to play. As such, the action chosen should match the player’s expectation of what happens when clicking on a cell. However, in some scenarios, I didn’t feel that there was an obvious action. For example, if a player has ranged and melee weapons selected, what should happen when the player clicks on an enemy outside of the ranged weapon range? Another example is pushing an object in a cell. If the cell is not adjacent to the player (requiring the player to move to the object and then push it), the direction to push the object can’t be inferred. Both of these examples stem from being able to both move and perform an action by clicking a cell. If players were required to move and perform actions separately, there would be only possible outcome for each combination of cell and action. However, player input would be less streamlined and intuitive with this constraint. My general solution to this problem was to display the combination of actions (e.g. move, then perform melee attack) to explicitly communicate to players what would happen when clicking on a particular cell. I think it works well but I’ll need to get feedback from others. By the way, the solution to the push example above involved having the player specify the direction to push the object in (unless the player is adjacent to the object, in which case the direction can be inferred).
- Made shooting/throwing work with quick switch slots. As mentioned last week, shooting had to be reworked for quick switch slots. This involved disabling the select cell prompt and basing the target on the cell the player clicked.
Work is winding down on the quick switch and click cell mechanics. I’m looking forward to doing something different, though I’m still focusing on the UI. After UI, it’s onto visibility, which includes field of vision, fog of war, and lighting. The main tasks remaining in this area are implementing torches and fully integrating FOV/FOW with the recently added dynamic lighting.
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