So I broke my code..sorta. It’s only broken in my feature branch. You know, in Git, when you make a branch off the main trunk to do some work, that branch is a CYA policy when you’re a solo dev! I was making game objects selectable — for targeting, casting spells on, etc. Then I bit off too much; I went in for updates to enemy movement logic…busted my build!
feature/move_to
I spent a little time reminiscing 10th-grade Geometry and vector math. I needed ‘enemy’ objects to find a target, move to the target, and then run the attack animation. I remembered an impressive amount; without reference, I could take a vector class and get the distance and direction, account for velocity and time, and my enemies were moving — but they wouldn’t stop!! I’ve got a hardcoded check for now and a TODO tag to add a collision or bounding to the object; for now, this is good enough for prototyping. I did discover in the debugging of this problem my sprite images have horrible center positions. I added code to show a circle centered on a sprite position. Sprite logic centers images on this position. I ASSUMED too much of my free sprite assets! They have way too much padding in the image files. And now I know.
//other tasks
I discovered Screenshot Saturdays and Turn-based Thursdays on Twitter! My new tribe of folks! I love seeing the stuff folks are working on and moving into distribution. I immediately joined the discord for it!
I’ve spent some time prototyping screens in Canva. I love this tool; I use it for my tabletop RPGs, client presentations, and stuff like that. Having digital colorforms to play with helps me figure out where things live on screen and to get it all out of my head.
I have begun reclaiming my kid’s previous laptop. It’s running Windows and just collecting dust. We usually donate when we upgrade. I plan to see how far I can build and run my code on it. Small-scale testing cross-platform builds, sooner rather than later!
I’ve pulled down the demo for Vagrus to play. I have been watching games like Darkest Dungeon (of course) and Limbus Company, thinking about how the characters move, fight, and interact. I love the visual movement of Limbus Company over Darkest Dungeon. I’m also heavily steeped in tabletop skirmish wargames and would love to incorporate some elements of skirmish play.
Mostly, I am keeping the main thing the main thing — making a turn-based combat prototype is the goal. By Dec 31st is the deadline. I should be able to branch the prototype code to change gameplay mechanics for experimentation. This will give me a first look at how Vancian magic might be fun.