For May, a lot of work was done on updating the world map from and on-the-rails systems to the more classic overworld map that lets you move your character freely as you traverse the world. Specifically, the world map includes interactable towns that you can enter/exit and enemies that patrol some specified area and trigger a combat event. Furthermore, code for the combat event has started to become refactored since it's the next major aspect of the game that going to be updated!
I Can Show You the World
Something that I've really wanted to update was the world map, since the original system felt constraining and not typical for JRPGs. As mentioned previously, it's now an overworld map where you move around and interact with the environment. For example, there are towns in the world map that you can enter:
Here you can see that some visual flair is added so that towns become recognizable on the map. Around the perimeter of the town there's a moving ring and the object lights up when you're close enough to enter the town.
On Patrol
The big thing that was added to the world map were the patrolling enemies. Enemy spawners exist on the world map and variables are set, such as: spawn area, max number of enemies, and enemy types that can be spawned. When approaching an enemy's line of sight, it will begin chasing you until it loses sight of you for about 2 seconds. If it does catch up to you, the screen with shatter and you'll be taken into combat.
What's great about the spawner is that the spawn area can be any shape and the enemies will randomly patrol in that area. In the clip below, the blue points are the defined vertices of the polygon the enemies can patrol, and the red points are the random points in the polygon that the enemies are moving towards.
Lastly, some polish was done on the actual way that the enemies spawn. To prevent you from getting immediately surrounded by enemies when you walk into range of a spawner area, the enemies will spawn one by one until the max capacity is reached. Also, there's a brief pause when the enemy initially spawns to give you time to react as well as to see the awesome spawning particles haha.
You Shall Not Pass
The final thing added to the world map are boundaries that restrict movement. This might not sound like a good thing, but this was implemented in case there were parts in the story where you weren't allowed to go back to a previous area. Additionally, this could be modified so that instead, your movement would stop when entering a boundary point and dialogue would appear. But for now, it's used mainly there are a precaution for if I need to use it in the future.
Behind the Scenes
Sometimes there are aspects of game development that aren't shown since it's not a visual change, but I like to put this part in the devlogs to update you on any additional things that might've come up. So, some stuff that's also been worked on were:
- Upgrading Unity to the newest version, 2019.1.
- Beginning to refactor the combat scene code.
- Updated how combat data, like enemies and map data, are stored and read.
- Added outline material shaders to all prefabs that were missing them
Going Forward
I'm pretty happy with the work that's been done for May! Looking into June, what I want to primarily work on, is the combat. There are some overhauls on the combat that have been floating in my mind and I'm looking to test/prototype those this month. Specifically, what I plan to complete is:
- Add vertical hexes and associated stats.
- Create a map editor to more easily create specific map configurations.
- Prototype different combat mechanics.
- Change how movement is done in combat, to the more traditional style.
If you have any suggestions or want to give your opinion on the game, follow me on social media, I listen and respond to any comment :D
