I threw away a big chunk of the code that I just wrote last week for Stat Modifiers. I made this decision when it became evident that maintaining a running sum of all Stat Modifiers for each Stat Type wasn’t worth the complexity. I originally chose this approach for efficiency; since the modifiers didn’t change that often, it would be more efficient to precalculate and store the values. In practice, however, the values are used infrequently enough that recalculating them every time doesn’t impact performance. The added complexity, primarily due to having to synchronize the running sums with the individual modifiers, increased the implementation effort and defect risk. In general, it’s preferable to store information in one place only.
- Improved Inventory Panel. The number of inventory slots has expanded from 24 to 32, the panel has widened, and combat stats are now displayed.
- Tooltips for stat bars and status effects. Hovering over the Health, Stamina, or Magic bars, or a status effect icon, now displays a tooltip with additional info.
- Actor Debugging Panel. A new toggleable panel displays detailed info about active actors, including location, vitals, status effects, and AI state. It’s been very useful for squashing AI bugs. This is a developer-only feature; it won’t be available to players.
- Bug fixes.
Next week starts with closing out AI bugs, followed by validating combat calculations (now that Stat Modifiers are in place) and continuing to add sound effects. Also, I’m going to start on interactions between items and objects, such as scooping water into an empty vial from a fountain.