It was a mentally challenging week, but ended on a good note. I did a project reality check and got discouraged by the amount of content I still have to create. I weighed some drastic alternatives including completely changing the vision to allow cutting most of the planned content, or (for a brief moment) giving up and focusing on my second biggest aspiration after game dev: writing a novel. I spent some time playing what I’ve built so far. While the current version succeeds at demonstrating the major mechanics, it’s a shallow experience. Many of the more subtle mechanics, largely pertaining to combat, aren’t implemented or are still broken from the refactoring I did a couple of months ago. That’s when it hit me that these details are the difference between boring and engaging gameplay. My highest priority is now completing these finer mechanics.
This Week’s Achievements
- Damage modifiers based on physical material resistances and vulnerabilities. Damage is now increased when the target’s physical material has a vulnerability to the damage type, decreased when the physical material has a resistance to the damage type, and eliminated when the physical material is immune to the damage type.
- Projectile-based spells. Spells that basically fire a projectile are partially implemented (they work, but I haven’t landed on a resource model yet).
- Consolidated redundant code for shooting and throwing items. Much of the code for shooting and throwing was the same. To implement spell casting, I would need to create yet another copy of that code. I decided to refactor and put the shared code into a parent class.
- Fixed miscellaneous minor bugs involving drag & drop, room generation, AI, combat, and pathfinding.
Next Week’s Goals
Next week, I’m focusing on combat mechanics including equipped item modifiers, terrain modifiers, visibility modifiers, and melee abilities.
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