The big news this week is that the Quick Switch Slots and Cell Action Indicators are done. I started on these exactly one month ago. They shouldn’t have taken this long to complete, but did because I had less time than usual over the past month and I underestimated the effort to code the features. They are two of the remaining three major UI features that need to be added (the third being Cell Context Menus).
- Completed Quick Switch Slots. Quick Switch Slots are similar to a hotbar, but are used to quickly change weapons and other held equipment, and enable automatic switching of melee and ranged weapons based on the target’s distance from the player.
- Completed Cell Action Indicators. Cell Action Indicators tell the player what will occur when a particular cell is left-clicked. An icon representing the action the player will perform is displayed when the cursor hovers over a cell. If the player first needs to move closer to the cell to perform the action, the Cell Action Indicator will display two icons, one for movement and another for the action to be performed.
- Player input and action refactoring. The above UI changes touched one of the uglier parts of the code that is responsible for triggering in-game actions from player input. In the interest of finishing this game, I’m being more selective on rework. However, some rework was unavoidable this time. Previously, there were Player Actions (actions mapped directly to player input, which could translate to in-game actions such as moving the player’s character, or UI actions such as opening the Inventory Panel), Action Types (in-game actions), and Actions (instances of Action Types, but still defined as separate classes for each Action Type due to the evolution of the code). It was messy and redundant. I renamed Player Actions to User Commands, which helped me mentally differentiate these from in-game actions. I added a minimum and maximum range attribute to each action so that the Cell Action Indicators can determine whether the player’s character has to move in range of an entity before interacting with it, replacing some hard-coded logic that only worked in certain scenarios. I standardized User Commands and Actions behavior. I moved some methods into more appropriate classes. I fixed all the little issues that cropped up from the changes. I even found a couple of bugs that predated the recent changes.
- Wand of Magic Missile. The Wand of Magic Missile was primarily created as a proof of concept for getting wands working, but will most likely stay in the game, and perhaps be a starter weapon for the Wizard class. I’m still deciding how to configure wands in terms of resource consumption. I’m leaning toward unlimited charges, no cooldowns, and eventual destruction from use. Wands will have to be underpowered to support this.
Next week, I’ll start working on the final remaining UI feature: Cell Context Menus. Right-clicking a cell will display a Cell Context Menu that lists all of the possible actions that can be performed on the cell (left-clicking performs the default action, as indicated by the Cell Action Indicator).
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