Update 8: Crafting, Farming, Skills and Currency Exchange
Aaaaand we're back to the incremental side! Finally! I did a number of tweaks and formatting changes, and fleshed out a bit more UI, and added some features to begin tying the incremental into the RPG: dungeon farming, and crafting, character skills, and a functioning currency exchange market.
Finally, I've added the beginnings of an "end game" script, and shifted all the special in-development buttons into a "dev mode", all of which signals the final stretch of this "prototype" game is starting to creep nearer.
What's new
- Farm page submenu implemented, now there is a Barn, Upgrades and Crafting buttons when visiting the farm, that switches to the relevant details inside the Farm page (NPCs always appear regardless of submenu)
- Curreny exchange: get rich on the market! Once you have enough copper, bronze coins open up. You can exchange them at an initial rate of 1.25 copper for 1 bronze. Rates change every minute, so in theory it is possible to game the system.
- Skills: characters can now have passive skills like "Gathering" and "Swords", although they don't do anything useful yet
- In-game notifications for a range of stuff, like when new elements/features are unlocked, eg. "Wood can not be chopped", "farm upgrade available" etc, and when you explore a dungeon, begin combat, and so on. All are formatted to be more noticable too, with colour or bolding as needed
- Crafting new tab added, and game now lists craftable weapons and their relevant material costs.
- Currency menu added, which will later enable currency exchange (copper -> bronze, etc)
- Clearing the final dungeon triggers end game script.
- "Devmode" added
- UI tweaks. E.g. modal-dialogue formatting cleaned up a little bit
Crafting
A pretty big gameplay addition, but surprisngly simple to implement. It basically operates the same as a shop - the only harder part is that instead of just a single currency cost (e.g. copper) it needs to "cost" various variable materials as well. Luckily, it uses the same logic as a lot of other things - like showing the equipment menu, except instead of listing equipment based on how many you own, it checks a flag property for whether the "blueprint" is "available", and then if so, loops through its "materials" to display the cost to make it.
Currency Exchange
Currency exchange is reasonably self-explanatory. Once you have over 400 copper, the exchange feature unlocks and allows you to change your hard earned copper pieces for bronze pieces. Of course, the spirits of the exchange market need to take their cut, so you don't get 1:1 rates.
All rates are based on the base formula of 100:1, as mentioned way back in my second post. A "market rate" is then applied on top of this. The default rate of copper is 1.25: which means 100 * 1.25 = 125 copper for 1 bronze. Steep!
However, the market rates change over time. The lowest you can ever get is 1:1 (i.e. 100:1) which is nice! Except for silver, which can never go lower than 1.5:1 (exchanging it into gold) and gold, which can never go lower than 2:1 (exchanging it into platinum). Currently you can only "forward" trade, that is, go from copper to bronze, bronze to iron, and so on. Though I will implement "backwards" trading, so a clever trader may be able to take advantage of arbitrage.
In this version of the game, you'd have to remember the rates at which you bought everything, and patiently watch the market rates. However, in the distant future I will add upgrades to help facilitate this, such as notifications when rates change, and tracking your purchases to help you secure the best value deals. It's a potentially neat little "game within a game", but it won't be essential.
Basically, if you prefer trading than dungeon farming, this feature will be for you!
Farming
Speaking of farming: after clearing a dungeon, a button now appears that lets you trigger combat in that dungeon on demand. In other words, you can "farm" monsters in the dungeon. This is a good counterbalance if the player got "lucky" and progressed a bit too fast, ending up in a dungeon that's too difficult.
Currently it's only good for farming XP to grind levels. But it opens up the way for monsters to drop useful loot and materials used for crafting.
I also plan to add a random enounter that is a treasure chest or some other interactive scenario. E.g. "you find a crack in the wall, what do you do?" and if a character has high enough strength, they can knock it down, revealing some loot. This will add a nice RPG touch to the base game. Loot (whether from chests or elsewhere) can contain "blueprints" which enable the development of better weapons
Skills
Although I wont be able to make a cool active combat skill system before the gam jam ends, I do plan to implement a basic passive skills systems. Everytime you gather wheat, chop wood, etc, you shold get skill XP. When you level up, you can gather more resources and carry more resources. Characters in combat shouldalso gain XP in the weapon type they are using, such as Swords. When they level up, their damage with the weapon type increases.
Currently I've implemented the first steps, adding it to Player/Adventurer objects and code to display and skills possed by that character. Next, I need to implement learning of skills, and the skills effect on combat/gathering/etc.
Notifications
Now, when you progress to a point where the game would make something new visible in the UI, the game explicitly tells you this. For example "[Upgrades] tab unlocked.", "[Stone] resource discovered.", and so on. Normally they say "show not tell" but in this case, the addded message seems to add a lot more game feeling, I think it makes the feeling of unlocking something more official, reenforcing a feeling of progression.
It's also useful as sometimes a new element appearing might not be so obvious, and players may not have realised there was something new to do.
Dungeons also start to give some descriptive messages when exploring: how much you managed to explore and whether you explored unscathed or if something heard you. Later I can add ambient effects as well, like "You hear noises." or "This section of the dungeon is lined with orante pots.", etc, for a bit of RPG flavour.
End Game
When the last dungeon is cleared, you get a message telling you that you've cleared the final dungeon (congrats, you!), and a button for the final battle will replace the normal dungeon button. Nothing further happens, yet, but it means the hook for triggering the end game (or end of "chapter 1"), is in place.
Devmode
This flag will determine whether extra controls and debug info shows up. It has stuff like gathering full resouces instantly, and the like, for faster testing. Now, the game will only show this stuff if "devmode" is switched on. Why doing this is signifiant, is that it signals the game getting closer to the real thing! Adding a devmode toggle means I can now have a "public" version of the game, but still turn on devmode and test it when needed.
Next Steps
Right now the main steps are just going over all these functions and making sure they work, finding bugs/mistakes I made, and finishing off these features:
next (required)
- "backwards" exchange (e.g. bronze back to copper)
- skills to gain XP and level up, and be applied to relevant actions
- implement armour
- add more weapons
- add loot to monsters, esp. weapon blueprints
- add final boss and victory sequence
later (highly desirable, if time permits)
- add other dungeon encounters like treasure chests
- more farm-related upgrades
- change adventurers, add classes and make it so better adventurers appear as you clear dungeons