Progress Log #8

Welcome Welcome

         A bunch of stuff has changed based on some feedback from the last demo, and more will be changing in the near future. Let's take this time to go over what those changes are, and what I plan to do later down the line.

         The new charge attack system caused some... interesting issues. The player would get stuck if they released the button before charging all the way,  the charge could be kept after pressing the block button, and there was an offset between the time it took to become fully charged and the time it took for Clef to start blinking. All of these issues have been since fixed, though I will still be keeping a close eye on this mechanic.

         Without natural health regeneration, the game is brutal. After seeing many people play the game in-person, I only saw two who managed to clear the level. I'll be fixing this in a couple of ways. For one, I'll be adding potions that give players a means to heal themselves, since I didn't have the time to do that before. I'll also be slowing the kobold melee attacks and lowering the maximum HP of the gnomes, since they can be fairly tough to deal with for what were supposed to be rudimentary first-level enemies.

         On the other hand, the enemy AI needs a bit of work. Enemies will  consistently walk off ledges, drop through platforms to their death, jump off platforms for no reason, or refuse to attack even when no other enemies are attacking. Ideally, in the future, I'll be able to add some new enemies with new, interesting tools; but I have to fix the generic AI before I can do any of that. I've been tweaking it constantly since it was first added to the game, but it looks like it'll need some maintenance for even longer.

         Though most of you probably didn't find it in the first place, the self-damage from the lightning spell has been removed. That self-damage made using the enchantment very irritating, and made it somewhat inferior to the good ol' fireball.  Now that it's gone, it feels a lot nicer to use and more powerful as well.

         That's all for now. I'm currently working on the item system, and I have plans to revisit enemy AI and work on the rest of this first level. Until then, you'll have to just keep playing the current version over and over again as you've already been doing. See you next week!