Category Archives: The Last Drop

Quick June Update

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Hi all! I just wanted to do a quick check in and update you on progress seeing as it’s been well over a month since the last time I did this. Everything has been progressing at a steady pace all be it a little slower than normal due to working on several freelance projects.

General Improvements

A portion of what I have been up to is a few improvements that were much needed in the game. Spine files are now loaded in a different way meaning that the game’s loading times have been drastically reduced, the loading previously was taking far too long and was getting in the way of healthy development. I’ve also adapted the way in which Spine files are drawn amongst the rest of the world tiles which makes the system much more robust and easier to adapt in the future.

Revised Path Finding

I’ve had an overhaul of the path finding system since creating a path finding algorithm for the movement grids. This has now fixed a whole bunch of issues that existed with the previous system where by the characters sometimes didn’t stop and would also cut corners. The only thing left to do now is have them walk as close to an obstructed position as possible rather than flat out refuse to as they currently do.

Combat

The main area I have been working on since the last update is the combat mechanics of the game and getting the basics down and working.

Enemies now have a turn themselves and can walk to a random area within a certain range, this will later be altered to a proper A.I. system but for now I simply just wanted to give an illusion of them doing something.

I’ve also implemented the shooting action for the player now along with a new version of the combat grid for aiming so that the player can shoot at nearby enemies and a health bar system for you to see both yours and the enemies health. Once hit the enemies health goes down until they eventually die then once all the enemies are dead the combat will end.

What’s Next

There are a lot of different things to tackle next so today I’m having a planning day to see where I should be headed. I’ll also try and get a video diary up soon of the progress.

That’s all for now.

Alex

Beginnings Of Combat

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Hi Folks! I’m back again, this time with a bit more detail on progress. Since the last update freelance work has kept me nice and busy so progress on the new project hasn’t been as much as I would have liked but it’s certainly starting to shape up.

Here’s the latest development diary for the project and following it is a text break down of what I’ve been up to.

Enemies

I’ve now altered the enemies to be loaded from the map XML and only be visible and active when you are in the same room as them. At the moment there is only one enemy type but in the future enemies will be randomly picked based on how far through you are and what type of room it is. The enemies now detect based on distance all-though I have ramped this distance up really high so combat triggers as soon as you walk into a room with enemies contained.

Combat

The main portion of the game I’ve been tackling since the last update is the combat which has been pretty exciting to finally work on. When you walk into a room containing enemies this instantly triggers, I’m not sure if this will be a permanent fixture just yet but my thinking is that it would make quite a good stealth mode.

When the combat triggers it plays a small intro where it pans the camera to each enemy who reacts with an animation then finally back to the player where it fades the world to darkness and shows the combat grid and combat UI.

So far the only actions implemented are moving and over-watch. You can select the action you want from the UI then select the square you want to move to on the grid and hit go to perform it.

The nice thing about the movement gird is that it path finds each cell when obstacles are present so that it knows how many steps it takes to move around that object and any cells not accessible in the movement range will be disabled. This is similar to the grid you can turn on in the PC version of X-Com. In the video I uploaded this doesn’t take into account corners but since recording the diary I’ve actually fixed that.

It’s not a full combat system yet but the plan is to get through it piece by piece and adapt it based on how it feels to play.

What’s Next

Next up is allowing the enemies to make a turn and move in a similar fashion. This will then be followed by implementing the shooting mechanics which should be pretty fun to work on

Until next time!

Alex