Devlog updates (Patreon)

Hey everyone,

A huge thank you to all my patrons! Your support has been amazing!
I managed to sneak some work in this weekend and am super excited to start getting more in.

I managed to add a very simple message system so I can tell what's happening in the combat. I want to do an upgrade that can have popups in different locations and show things like damage and status effects.

I got character death animations working I've also made it so it doesn't crash when the target dies. When a character dies it's removed from the base combat system so it can't be targeted.

I've also managed to include the leveling system, the first of the basic fighter stats and the ability to select your fighter.

Next steps

So I'm down to a couple important tasks, I need a proper GUI for the combat system. As I test the game I'm sure the GUI will change pretty dramatically, but I need to make sure that you can understand everything that is going on. At the moment it's a little confusing.

The biggest issue is if you don't understand what's happening it can be hard to tell if something is broken or not working the way it's supposed to. I can't really get players to test the system untill the system can tell them what supposed to be happening and what is happening.

I'm not sure the best way to show if you have a status effect like "frozen" or "sleeping" ext. I should be able to use some particles but I might need a basic popup system so you can find out more information.

I havn't added the menu/fight/run system but I won't add it just yet. I think that will probably be one of the last things to go it as it mostly involves the meta game.

Lastly I need a way for you to choose your ability and use ability trees. This will involve doing a little bit of work on the inventory system to support abilities as a seperate type of inventory item. I've also got a list of bugs from the last Demo to fix. But I don't think this will take too long, I already have the basic pieces I just need to fix them up a little.

But the good news is the very core of the combat system is working, I can construct abilities, I can start adding the core stats and mechanics and I have an AI system that can use the abilities. I can also have multiple characters/parties on both teams.

I don't really need to do to much more work on the base combat system because it has all the features I want. I need to make sure that as a player you can understand what's going on and how much health you have/what abiltiies are avaliable.

As for game mechanics they will be added one ability at a time so I won't have to wait untill all the abilities are in the game I will be adding new abilities and ability trees one at a time as I need them. That way I can test each element that is included.

So my hope is that in within the next two weeks I'll have a fully working combat system that works with the current state of the game and that people can understand. Once I'm happy with that I'm going to start working on the next demo.

So what will the next demo be? I haven't started designing it yet but I'm thinking of a haunted wood, with a few houses with some friendly people to give you a hot cup of cocoa and a diaper change.

Hopefully I'll have some more exciting updates later this week!