DragCore: The Crystal System

    Players like progression. It's fun to watch bars fill up when you play. Having a sense of purpose makes a game more fun and addictive. It works because in your mind you aren't wasting time, you're working toward something. My favorite thing about Call of Duty multiplayer was leveling up and seeing the yellow text with "+2" or something on it. It's fun to grow and earn rewards. 

     I came up with something to put those values in DragCore. I call it the Crystal System. It's changed a few times as I've been trying to decide to use it as either an experience level or currency. I ultimately decided on experience level presented as currency. Read on to see an explanation of this madness.

DragCore: Spawning Enemies

     Making enemies pop out was a big pile of code in the old DragCore prototype. With the new one it has been simplified to a few lines of code thanks to the greatness of Unity. What used to be an array and tons of code to alter each of the 200 elements became a matter of instantiating up to 20 objects and have them reset themselves. See the code that makes it work below the break.

First Week of School (Spring 2014)

     Things went about as well as I had hoped. It feels good to be back overall. Schoolwork is more tedious than difficult and I missed having people to talk to. I can play Smash Brothers with my roommates and see my girlfriend on a regular basis again. In terms of goofing off, I'm trying to get better at using Mewtwo in Smash Bros Melee for the school's upcoming BYOC.

     In terms of work, I'm get all my school business out of the way by 8, giving me my 4 hour minimum work time. I can finally feel DragCore coming together now that the core game loop is running and a little polished. My next big task is getting the Custom mode menu to work right and doing lots of playtests. I'm just glad that the hardest parts are behind me. I feel confident that this semester will turn out well and I think I'll be much better off when it's over.

Status Report #21

     Home stretch baby! I want DragCore done and off my development plate and into playtesting by next Saturday! It's been fun, but I want people to start playing it now. All the pieces keep sliding into place and I know I'm so close to having it ready for extensive playtesting with my friends.