Devlog 5th March 26

First...

You might notice a different tone from week to week. I should probably explain that there's two people working on the game again. I am working on programming, game systems and so on while the other person is concentrating on doing a full overhaul of Pineridge. The plan is to be putting out weekly devlogs, alternating. So this week is my turn.

Where is combat at?

First up, enemy combat has now been completed, the player combat menu is now in progress again. This is going to initially be relatively limited in options but it is being built so it is expandable. Essentially, it will be running off of a DataTable(think of a spreadsheet but with more datatypes), so when we want to expand attacks or options we can just add a new row and animations and it will drop into the game and work immediately.

Currently I am working on the initial attack option. When you initiate combat, the initiator gets a full ATB bar and can immediately choose an attack, takedown or whatever. The FirstStrike attack can immediately knock one of the enemies out of combat, either ending it straight away or removing the number of enemies.

This needs animations for the attacks. At the moment my list of animations has 20 animations or actions required and I've done FF and FM versions of FirstStrike, and the first second of the attackers side of MM and MF.

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Anything else?

I've also been doing tweaks and changes to the combat. As I test attacks and flows I'm seeing issues crop up and adjusting them so it works better, smoother or even differently. For example, it was set up so that a combo attack would fail if an enemy blocks. The idea was that combos only continue if an actual hit is made. In reality, this just ground the combat to a halt and you'd rarely manage a full combo. So that bit of logic was removed and blocked hits still count as hits, just ones that do no damage. As a result it feels way more satisfying.

Next, blocking has a damage indicator pop up saying "BLOCKED" but it's not satisfying. So that got a sound effect, particle effect sparks bursting away from your block and a quick flash of light for the sparks. It gives it a decent feel. I'm going to keep saying "satisfying".

I felt some weapon trails would help as well. It has no practical purpose, but it looks neat to have a trail from the attacking fist or foot when you fling them at an enemy.

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Whats the current plan?

Animations and tweaking combat. Once all the required animations are done I can move on to the takedowns which we already have animations for, so its just setting up the workflow for that and it should just drop into the menu. The only real goal now is to complete combat. Once thats done there's only a few outstanding tasks for this phase of development.

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What is after this dev phase?

Revamped sex and struggle system.

I'm trying to avoid building anything that modifies how that all works at the moment, but I still need to build entry points, so it's a bit messy around the edges. But once we have combat and those entry points working then we should be on the right track.