Hey everyone, it's that time again. Like I said, I've gotten a lot done, and the game is a closer to reaching the Alpha stages! I'll only mention the most notable stuff. That's because something that I've learned with time is that no one really cares if you added a barebones title screen, and main menu.
Like sure, the code behind said systems, and the process of implementing them were fun and interesting, but the average person is never going to know that. I think I've talked about this before in a devlog of my previous project. About the cognitive dissonance of the develop and the end-user playing the game. It's always have been different, and as a developer, I've been on both sides of the spectrum.
Am I gonna expand on this later? Probably not, but there one silver lining with adding a title screen and main menu, the game is a lot more accessible for people to test out. No launching the game with a command line argument required. You could try out this version of the game on GitHub. Feedback is very much appreciated.
Github: https://github.com/ProarchwasTaken/tld_skirmish
Showcase Video
Stages
Let's talk about the important stuff. I laid the groundwork for stages which serve as the backdrop for the scene. They're relatively simple in concept. Only consisting of a background, and an overlay. They're not necessarily a class per say as all the textures for a stage are retrieved using a utility function. Through the usage of Gimp, and Aseprite, I've prepared the first stage, and the template for making more stages in the future
Gameplay Loop
As for the main game loop, I've got it working. At lot faster than last time too. While it is basic, it's exactly how I wanted it to be. With it being easy to understand at first glance.
If you're accustomed to these types of games, you know how it goes. There's a timer that ticks down, and a new wave begin when it hits zero. This continues until the final wave is reached, and the player wins once all the enemies on the final wave is defeated. (Although, I haven't gotten around to implementing that last part yet.)
Another thing is that different thing will happen depend on the current phase of game. Which is determined by the current situation. For example, if there are no enemies active or waiting to be spawned, the player will use a different idle sprite, and slowly regenerate missing health. As of now, this is the only method I have planned for the player could regain health.
What's next?
What's left is to implement one more thing and some miscellaneous changes, and the game would now be the alpha stages. With how simple the game is, I'm starting to have a proper roadmap for the game in mind. So expect some new flowcharts in the "docs" directory in the GitHub repository. With that, I'll see you guys later.