Hello Internet!
A new devlog video is up, that covers a couple of new features in the game - The greed system, how mushrooms work, what the animations look like, how to lose the game and also how enemies break your precious tiles.
The greed system
The new greed system was the topic of the last article I wrote, where the focus is to limit the player resources a bit. Instead of adding a max capacity or a weight system, which is a very common thing, I wanted the amount of resources to be a choice, a tactical one.
When the player have resources above a threshold (10 of each as of now) there's a small percentage that a 'resource enemy' will spawn and lurk among the resource tiles. More resources means higher chance.
The enemies will not spawn right away, but instead show a token, a bird, on the tile where it is lurking. When the player gathers resources from that tile, it will spawn right next to the tile, defending it.
These enemies will never more further away from 'their' tile than one tile. So, the player can choose whether to try and grab the rest of the resources while dodging the enemy movement, or just straight up battle it to eliminate the threat.
Mushrooms
Instead of increasing difficulty by something arbitrary, like 'every 60 seconds' or something similar, I wanted to mechanise the increasing difficulty over time. In the level, there's no area that is harder by default. That's where the mushrooms come in.
Mushrooms spawn on random empty tiles across the level, and the player is able to remove the mushroom by activating the tile. This will in practise mean that the mushrooms will not grow for long near the player. When the mushrooms have grown to full potential, and enemy can eat them.
When an enemy eats mushrooms, it will level up. It will also get a bit bigger, but for now this also means more health. So, if a player is not in an area on a regular basis, more mushrooms will grow, and there will be a bigger chance of enemies there that has levelled up.
Animations
While not being a super exciting topic, it adds a lot of juiciness to the game. Instead of 'teleporting' between tiles, all entities have a smooth jumping animation.
Enemies and players also animate during combat, instead of being static and not really telling what's going on.
Losing the game
There are two ways to lose the game. The first one ties into the combat/resource system, and the other is an objective to protect a specific tile.
The player has three sources of damage, and those also serve as health: Body, Weapon and Shield. Their durability is 'health', and they also affect how much damage each source can dish out. Lots of Body health means lots of damage when using that source.
So, the player will die when all three sources are down to 0. Think of it like three different health bars.
The player is on top of that responsible for protecting a house. When the enemies scout the level, they might find the house, and try to destroy it. This is by far the easiest way to die right now, and it will tie into the building system that is not implemented yet.
Enemies breaking tiles
The enemies can break the house, but there's more. They can also destroy the two tiles Anvil and Table, the tiles where the player repairs their damage sources. If the anvil is broken, the player cannot repair the sword. This means that the player 'health' is suffering, as well as the ability to use the sword in combat.
Luckily, the tiles can be repaired, although it's pretty pricy.
