Week 5

The game is actually playable at this stage now. I am very happy.

So, on Monday, me and James decided to create the AI for the game. We started off with the movement AI.

With the movement AI, there were different states it will be in depending on how much health they have. If they have more health, they will be more aggressive, and if they have low health, they will be running away more. So, we were able to implement these states so that the AI feels more realistic. Even if they are on low health, they will not always run away. I am very happy that this system was created. With the actual movement itself, we have it either moving towards the closest player and away from them. Nothing too complex.

We then decided to create the AI for the shooting, as well as the shooting for the player. Since it is purely just stats, we implemented the same lock on system, but with the enemies and changed the health points of them. We also have accuracy as a stat, so the player may miss their shot. This is also the same for the AI. Even if they are running away, they will shoot if in range. They can also miss their shot.

At this point, there is a game. I am ecstatic.

My task now is to translate the skills into an excel document, as well as write up how the code works, and what each part does on my blog. I have a lot to do and am happy to do them.

Tuesday, me and Sean did quite a bit of skill works.

So, I needed his help with filling out the excel spreadsheet for the skills, since he was the one that was designing them. The first thing we did was just start writing them down, the name and the effects. However, this proved more complex since some of the skills could break the game.

So, we then decided the base stats of each species, which took a very long time. We had to consider what the player may do, and whether there is a limit to some of the stats. For example, there has to be a limit to how far a character can move in one turn. We were able to create the base stats, after a lot of time… Each species have different base stats.

We then sort of redesigned the skill tree a bit, still having the base concept within it. With the skill tree, the player will be able to spec into one of the 6 types of classes, which will increase the players stat permanently. Once you have invested a certain amount of points into said class, that character will obtain the skills. Once they have fully spec that one tree, they will have some left over points to use for the others stats. However they will not have enough points to get skills from the other classes. This way, the character can still get more points into the other stats.

After all of this was done, we decided on range and damage numbers for each of the weapons. We based this on the information from before, using the character stats. This did not take as much time as the other parts.

Finally, we got back to the main task of writing up the skills. We had to translate the skills into numbers and stats, how they affect everyone. This was not too difficult to do, although we had to change quite a bit of effects since we have not implemented any status effects into the game. I think it should be easy to implement these status affects, but for now, we decided to just keep it simple.

In the end, we decided on having 12 skills in total, all with different effects. This will keep the game interesting, and the skills themselves are quite fun.

Wednesday, I decided to write up how the code works for the character movement script and the turn manager. It was not as difficult as expected, since I was actually listening to what James was saying. Hopefully I am actually writing it out properly.

Well, looks like I decided to just write up all the scripts on Wednesday night. Great! Well done me! what do I do now…

So, Friday. I have been tasked to do some 2D art for the icons of the skills. Pretty much, just create loads of initial sketches for each skill, and just send it to Olivia. It was quite refreshing, since I have only been doing coding. I was able to create 5 different sketches for each skill, so I am going to post it on Trello.

For the weekend, I am going to write up my research onto my blog, as well as my prototyping. After these things have been done, I will then start my research on how to create a skill tree.