Weekens Update

Too much real work, not enough game development. If I could just drop 12 good hours on it, I'd be done with the animations.

That's really all I have to say, maybe I'll get a little further with what's left of the evening.

The Squire

Every young man wants to grow up to be a knight at some point. Most don't make it past being a squire.

So this is the squire. He's a knight in training, and he and the bard make up your starting crew. He's a well rounded attacker, if a bit fragile.

• He doesn't have the power of grown warrior, but he is still trained with his sword. His first attack is just a basic slash.
• His second attack is to gather up his courage. This gives him an attack buff.
• His third attack is to flee in the face of danger, it gives him a little health, and a speed boost (which unlike some other speed boosts, can be used immediately.)
• The final move is one common to many warriors. Take a second to gather his bearings and recover. This heals him for a fair bit.

Between being able to run away and heal effectivly, he's not a bad fighter to keep with you through the game. Bit on the weak side, but he makes up for that with the flee ability.

I don't have anymore lore or anything. I wanted to profile one of the crazier classes, but I forgot till the last minute and need to do the reverse images for all the classes I was thinking of covering.

Attack animations are going very smoothly. Actually better than expected. Real work means I want to come home and not program, so I've put in very little time. That's ok though, because I'm flying through the attacks. I'm not halfway done, but finishing the animations this weekend is a distinct possiblity.

Below the cut, some short thoughts on difficulty.

Weekly Update

I don't feel like I've accomplished much, but I think I've spent quite a bit of time working on the game. I've been debugging the attacks I do have, adding in the summons, and recording sound effects. I've cut a few more attacks that I didn't think added anything, and now that I'm looking at it, I don't think the animations will take more than the next two weeks, provided I just work on them. Knowing my work habits, I'll get distracted and work on level art instead. While there are a lot of attacks, a lot of them are similar to other attacks. This definitely makes my life easier. We'll see.

No screenshots this week, nothing really new and notable. I've got an idea for a new title screen, but I want to get it finished before posting. Need to finalize a title before I can do that.

Unfortunately, work is back to ramping up again, so I become less productive on my game. I end up spending the same amount of time, I just end up accomplishing very little.

I would spend an hour writing something about something unrelated to my game, but I'd rather get some animations in. I really want to get this game done.

The Witch Docta

So this week, we have the Witch Doctor.

He does an bit of voodoo, and knows a bit about medicine. I tried to avoid the dedicated healer roles in the game. I've never liked the tank / healer / dps trichotomy [wow, turns out I didn't make that word up... go me?]. It always struck me as a bit limiting and confining on a broad strategic level. You still could play the game that way, but you probably won't win fights quick enough to get the unlock.

The witch doctor is probably the closest class to a dedicated healer in the game. I'd have to check, but I think he's the only class with two heals in his moveset.

• The witch doctor carries around a staff, he can whirl it around and hit everyone around him. He's not the strongest, and you probably wouldn't really want him surrounded, but if he happens to be...
• He can cast a hex. This hits the enemy with a random condition.
  
• He can apply a healing balm to someone next to him. This is cheap and effective healing.
• The other heal is a healing prayer, this heals all of your allies in a certain area. Not so cheap healing.
  

Originally he was designed with more focus on the voodoo aspects - he had a summonable voodoo doll. I had cut the Surgeon, which was another somewhat dedicated healer, and I was trying to cut down on summons where possible, so he lost his voodoo doll and gained the healing balm.

Below the cut, I spend too long talking about some very minor design decisions.

Weekend Update

Very successful week. I have something to show for it too, which is even better. I built all of the characters attacks out, with a few exceptions. This means that all the attacks function and the AI can handle them. I still need to do all the summons, and I suspect I will have to do some tweaking for the AI, but it's an important milestone none the less. I built a blank map to test the characters and their attacks and took a screenshot.

They didn't quite all fit in one screen, but there you are. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to guess who's who. I won't put out a complete character list, so until you unlock them in game, use your imagination.

Secondly I did up about half the world map. I had no plan to do this during the week, but I was in the neighborhood so to speak. I've got about half the map done-ish. Here's a second gratuitous screenshot.

So that was my week. Next week I need to finally put the summons in. This requires some AI modification and some other tweaks. I've known exactly what I needed to do for some time, but have essentially been to lazy to actually do. It isn't even that much work. Secondly this week I have to test all those attacks I added. Once that's out of the way (or I get bored) I should start in on the battlefields.

So those were the interesting bits, after the cut, I talk about why I'm writing this.

The Bounty Hunter

So here we have the Bounty Hunter. The bounty hunter usually only gets paid for bringing someone in alive, so he's good at disabling and weakening his quarry. He usually has to chase his prey for long distances; this means that he has to be prepared for anything that comes his way, and he has quite a bit of endurance. Let's take a look at his tool bag:

• His trusty pistol is never far from his side. It's his standby attack.
• He also carries a knife. Each stab of the knife may not be very damaging, but it's a very quick attack.
  
• Knowing he needs to catch his quarry alive, he throws out a net, tangling up his quarry and stopping them from moving.
• Always prepared, the bounty hunter always carries a flask of hearty stout. He can drink it himself, or toss some to a friend. It heals for a bit, and keeps healing him for a while.
  

He's a pretty sturdy unit, and has a fair bit of MP for endurance. His attacks are probably two of the weakest in game, but in the end, he'll still be standing.

After the jump: I complain about blogger, and talk about a quick design change that has a significant effect on gameplay (and you probably won't notice).

week update

All 50 classes are illustrated! I should put them all in a single image and let folks guess who's who, but that would take a while, and I have better things to do, like write a long uninteresting rant about the indie games tab. Anyway, they're illustrated, and that's good. Hopefully I can make some progress on animations this week.

That's it really, everything after the jump is just a long series of rants that probably won't make sense.