We Can Rebuild Him

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Time: 18:34

Small update today, as mentioned yesterday I've added the ability to upgrade the ammo capacity of the bow and bomb weapons. The costs I may well play with in the future, was more a programming challenge than a meaningful feature. I might even turn these into a hidden item the player can collect or stick with my original plan and just have hidden cash stash's and let the player decide what they want to focus on. I think over time I've become more of a fan of letting the player make decisions on upgrade paths. In a future project this is another thing I would like to focus on, levelling up, skill trees or more upgrade choices.

Modified the player UI slightly to also reflect the maximum number of arrows and bombs that can be held. I'd have liked to have better made it fit and actually while writing this I've actually had an idea on how to do this so I might revisit that soon. I may in the coming days talk a little about what influences I've taken idea's from and some design ideas and just general bits that come to mind.

Yes you may have noticed in the video that buying bomb upgrades costs money but doesn't actually grant a bigger ammo limit. This was a small fix I just hadn't added an amount to my global variables. I have fixed this now.

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Retail Therapy

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Time: 19:02

Getting ever closer to finishing up all of the game features for this project. Todays job is sorting out the village shop, a nice little place for the player to spend all those coins that have been falling into the players pockets. Sadly this mean no more free handouts when it comes to ammo for the player! However on the bright side find enough of those coins and you'll be able to upgrade your health all the way up from one to five bars.

Got a very basic version of the shop up and running pretty quickly but wanted to make it easier to expand if extra weapons were introduced or if I wanted to change the cost or how many items were given etc. Final thing I want to do is have the ability to upgrade the ammo limit. The pieces are all there I just need to throw together the last little bits of code. Not sure the game will be long enough for all these extras though but it's a good learning experience.

As for the game itself it's going to have a very simple structure of item collecting, each new quest completed will unlock a new item which will allow the player to complete another quest and eventually find the final item. There will be a few hidden spots dotted about with some extra money in it for getting upgrades. I would like to have some boss fights chucked in for variety and as an extra programming challenge, see how far I can I can take the state machine system.

Some of the graphics still need a little more looking at, I need to build an underground cave tile set. Not on this current project as it stands but would like to look into some advanced lighting tricks in the future and other more advanced things as I've only just touched on what it possible.

The final parts of this project are getting a title screen, a save / load system and some kind of intro and ending.

As for longer term plans I plan to revisit another top-down style engine, this one is was more arcade shooter but I would love to combine ideas from the two styles. There's still a third similar tutorial series I want to go over. I don't intend to follow these exactly one for one and will be bringing in all the bits I have learned to give it a bit of my own flair.

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The Pot Calling the Kettle Black

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Time: 16:36

Not going to lie, lost a bit of motivation recently on where I wanted to take things and what I wanted to do next but I'm back at it. The first issue I had was the issue of thrown items... Yes I want a thrown item to hit a solid wall, and yes I want the item to pass through empty space.. The issue however was what happens when the thrown item interacts with a pass over space, such as a hole? An arrow would fly right over this without stopping, which is fine, a thrown item on the other hand can land in this space and become stuck on top of water or a hole. The first solution was just to have water act as a solid barrier that thrown items would collide with, this causes an issue with bombs exploding when they hit the water line since it shares the same behaviour. The solution I went with in the end was to have the items check where they were upon landing, if they were out of bounds they now respawn back to where they started. I like this and although it took a bit of sorting I think works best. I had to create a new type of area though for places the player might not be able to reach, such as behind transition areas.

The main change though is I've now turned off the player starting with all items unlocked and having allot of health. Once I get the shop up and working wither the player will be able to rebuy extra health blocks or maybe I'll have them as hidden items... more decisions. For the time being I've moved the quest items back into the town area. Returning the shades will unlock the BOW weapon... but wait whats this? Talk to Froggie again and he'll mention he might have something else to ask of the hero. Leave the building and go back and he now has a SECOND quest, he's lost his little pot. Go find it for him and you'll be rewarded with BOMBS, now we're talking. Further conversations with him will give you 15 ammo for your BOMB and BOW weapon for the time being.

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