Progress Log #2

Agh

         Hello again. A lot of the stuff I got done this week is stuff that is difficult to capture in images, but I do have this prototype for a fireball sprite:

         It doesn't look like much right now, but just you wait until I layer a bunch of friggin' shaders over it. That'll make it look cool probably.

         Anyways, most of what I got done had to do with setting up the system for using spells, which wasn't all too different from the one for regular attacks. The difference is that the value that stores the player's spell data is meant to be swapped out, which is pretty easy to do thanks to Godot Resources. I don't like to think about where I would be without Godot Resources.

         The actual projectile works well too. In my indie developer efforts to be a little bit subversive, I made the fireball a "bouncy" projectile instead of giving it a linear path. This decision was mostly inspired by Dhalsim's powered-up arching fireball in Street Fighter 6, which travels in a tall arc and then bounces towards your opponent when it hits the ground. It's very annoying to deal with. I love it.

         Aside from the inherent goofiness of a bouncy fireball, it also makes the projectile way more interesting overall. You could use it to cover space, extend your combos, and that's pretty much all I could think of. However, the bouncy fireball would do these two things much better and in a more interesting way. Do you really want another boring linear projectile? Didn't think so.

         All of the enchantments are going to be very distinct from each other, so the projectiles (among other things) for many of them might end up requiring their own scripts. However, I currently have what is hopefully a pretty generic script that can be used for many different kinds of projectiles, so I'll be doing my absolute best to shoehorn it into as many enchantments as I can so that I can get away with doing as little work as possible. While I'm mostly joking here, finding ways to cut development time is very importantー especially as a college student.

         In other news, jump height is now based on how long you hold the jump button for. I don't think I fully grasped just how important this feature was to making the movement feel satisfying, especially when you can't change direction mid-air. This also means you don't have to make a full arc just to jump over a single-tile step. Hopefully I'll be able to release another demo relatively soon so that this can be shown off.

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         Drawing and Animating are both hard, but I hope to have more things to actually show next week. I'll work on the fireball more, as well as fix some more issues with the kobolds. My summer class will also be over after next week, so I'll really be able to start dedicating time to this project then  With that being said, I'll be here next week. So long, partner.