Adventures in Equica: Combat Score System

     I was watching my girlfriend play Super Paper Mario and was fascinated by the way simple points for killing enemies made the game feel special. I imagined such a thing in an RPG and the idea felt exactly like what I wanted to try in Unicorn Quest. Now its shooter aspect feels more arcade styled.

     You get points for killing baddies and lose some for getting hit. When the last wave of enemies is cleared, victory fanfare will play and gems and experience crystals  for you to collect will spawn randomly across the battlefield. After you pick up everything you want you press an exit button to leave the battle room. The amount of rewards appearing depends on your score.

    I'm still balancing how many points are worth an experience point/gem but it's next on my list. Now that combat is working it's time to add in a bunch of missing features to make battling feel more solid. Also, if you're curious about the font used, its 8 Bit Wonder by Joiro Hatgaya from dafont.com. There's a black copied layer of text behind it to give it a solid appearance.

Summer Work Station

     The best thing gamedev-wise about school was the comfortable work environment. In my dorm I had a work desk and I also had access to the windowless Gaming & Simulation Lab (which is getting a redesign & lounge area soon!) where I could work for 6 hours that felt like only 2. I also had my choice of a sturdy wooden chair and a spinning wheely one.

     At home I just lay on my bed. Tossing and turning as my arms fall asleep. If I'm going to develop all summer I needed a better work environment. I moved furniture in my room around in a way that let me use a short dresser as a desk. My parents took notice and came back to me with the setup you see above. All old stuff just laying around in the basement or at work.

      I can now gamedev in an upright position with dual monitors, a wireless mouse, drawing desk, and a scanner within arm's reach! This is going to be a very productive summer.

Status Report #38

     First week of summer over already? And a lot got done too? This time out of the classroom has been great so far. I've made a nice routine for myself of handling blog stuff in the morning, working on Unicorn Quest all day, taking a workout break around 5pm, and watching a couple episodes of Attack on Titan at midnight. I have comfortable work conditions now (a chair instead of a stack of pillows) and I see production increasing even further starting today because I have no plans other than making progress for the next few weeks.

     Watch a video of combat in action and take a look at this week's status report!

Scrapped: Subtle Bouncing

     A very annoying and game-breaking bug came up yesterday. It allows you to walk through any solid object if you push into it for a second. To get around this, I spent all of yesterday rethinking the way I do collision and went back to the problem I had months ago. In the end, the answer was obvious (like always) and I simply needed to get rid of a polish effect.

    There was a subtle bounce movement when Clover ran that make her gallop feel more natural, but that movement pushed the sprite just enough to clip through walls. I tried putting protective fields around everything to turn off the bounce when near something, but Clover's collider ignores it. In the end, it just needed to be scrapped. I'm really sad to see this nice touch go, but I'd rather have imperfect character animation than a broken collision system.