Update 5: Equipment
Another fun (albeit bare-bones) feature has been added: equipment!
You can now equip weapons from a list. The game dynamically displays a list of weapons carried and allows equipping/unequipping, shifting them to and from the inventory pool and player as needed, and displays their stats in a tooltip. Sounds unimpressive, but for me a big achievement. It also goes a long way to making the game start feeling like an RPG (just ask the CRPG addict) - meaningful character development and equipment that affects stats seem core to the old school compute RPG experience.
For now, weapons and just have a couple of properties: the name, a description, a dmg/defense rating and a value. I am working on a system to enable them to boost stats (e.g. a sword that boosts strength, wands that boost magic power, wizard hats that give additional MP, etc). That's probably as complex as it will be in the game jam version, but a few future ideas such as useable weapons (e.g. ice sword casts ice bolt) or weapons that teach skills are possible things to consider.
There have also been a number of small but notable updates:
- Splash screen: there is now a title screen. Feels almost like an actual game now!
- Visual tweaks: the UI fills out the page better (and is more responsive), with a few formatting tweaks... starting to look less eye-gouging!
- Dialogue code: has been cleaned up into a dialogue function which can create game-stopping modal popups or standard log msgs.
- NPCs: You can now talk to the two strangers as well as the farmer, who drop cryptic hints about the state of the outside world.
- Settings button: clicking a cog on the top right opens a settings panel which lets you manually save (autosaves every 30sec), or hard reset.
- UI: Main text log can be cleared or minimized, Resources menu sections are now collapsible/expandable.
- Levelling up: now grants a whopping +1 maximum HP.
- Worker side menu: nothing in this yet but will later enable you to quickly recall and mass-assign workers.
Normal game screen (1366x768):
In a very small window, everything stays pretty much in shape:
Game Jam version: scope
Getting this far helps me to clarify some game design scope goals. Seeing how long it takes, I know I need to keep things very basic for the game jam version. I want to have something relatively self-contained and "finishable" with some sort of victory scenario for the game jam, even if it is just like a "End of Chapter 1".
Characters will only have "weapons" and "armour" for now. I will also create potions that heal characters by set HP amounts. This will be my main goal for the game jam, nothing more complicated than that.
Characters have basic classes, probably just fighter, rogue, mage, cleric for now. Rather than abilities, characters will simply have "attack", but its power will be based on their key stat. So rogues' dmg is based on dexterity, while a mage's is intelligence. Imagine "attack" representing the classes' innate styles: the rogue attack is actually sneakily stabbing while the wizard's is slinging fireballs. [thought: maybe automatically name "attack" to "stab", "fireball", etc based on class in the game jam version]
Stretch goals
The minimal scope is not a limitation - just a first milestone goal. I have lots of complex ideas, the foundations of which are already being built into the game framework for future.
For example, Weapons can be of various types, and these types can have various common properties. For example, swords do slashing damage and daggers do piercing. Armour likewise can have types: "light", "medium" and "heavy", in future versions magic or rogue characters should only be able to equip the appropriate armour.
I also want to have a complex magic and abilities system, with skill trees and research, where the right selection of skills can harmonise or play off each other in (hopefully) interesting ways such as, say, dousing enemies in a pool of water then throwing an electric shield on your tank that shocks attacks, resulting in all nearby enemies get hit by electric attacks each time the tank is attacked.
Realistically speaking, ambitious complex ideas is why I never finished a game before, so for now, these are just "high concept" things. I'm committed first to my simple game jam version goals, which means I might actually finish something.
Next step: hiring adventurers
Now that I have a player character with stats, who can level up, and equip items, the next step will be enabling the hire of adventurers, and to be able to likewise gear and level them up. The next step is to then create a series of simple dungeons with generic skeletons to smash. At that point, the Game Jam version milestone will almost be met, and I just need to fill out a bit of content and pacing.
There's still around 10 days to go, so... I think it's pretty achievable. And if there's time leftover, I can start adding more interesting and deep stuff like more complex equipment and a skill system. Fingers crossed!