Another week of programming has passed, and the game now has projectiles, ranged attacks, food, and a hunger bar! Here’s a summary of the main features that I added during the week:
Main Features:
- Ranged attacks: So last week I added the first bow into the game, and this week you can use it to do the first ranged attack of the game! By introducing the concept of projectiles into the game this week the bow can now fire arrows in any direction.
- Projectiles: So as I mentioned, projectiles are now in the game. At the moment this is just limited to arrows, but I will be using them for many different ranged and magic attacks. Projectiles have collision detection allowing arrows to stick into walls and trees, while magic attacks will explode when hitting a solid object.
- Hunger: The concept of hunger is something that I felt would work well in my game. A player’s hunger meter decreases slowly over time and when it is empty the player starts to take damage. This process is very slow however, so you only have to stock up on food occasionally. I definitely don’t want starving to be something that players have to constantly worry about, but I like the idea of players occasionally having to take some time out to buy some food at the market or in a nearby inn.
- Hunger Bar: To display the hunger meter of a player I added the hunger bar under the player’s life bar. The bar indicates how hungry your player is by how full the bar is and the bar also changes colour accordingly. A player who is too hungry or too full will not be able to hit as hard in combat.
- Food: To replenish your hunger you have to eat some food! Food can be bought from shops and in the future can be farmed or hunted. The “fillingness” of the food determines how much hunger it heals when eaten, while the “energy release speed” of the food determines how quickly your player will get hungry again. It pays to eat healthily (in game and irl)!
So that’s what I’ve been up to recently. You can check out everything I just mentioned in the development diary video below. Next time I’m going to be doing some work on the game engine, so look out for more updates on that.
Thanks for reading!
I like your excitement! Keep this attitude up and you'll definitely end up with a great game.
Also, good luck with your Dissertation, been through that :S
Thank you :)
Very good progress! It's coming along nicely.
About food values, there's a lot of ways you can do it, I personally feel that your current labels are great, but some experienced players might feel hindered by it.
To make everyone happy, you can show both! There are many ways you could do it: add a tooltip with the exact value, add it next to the label Low(2), or make them hold a key (eg Alt) to show detailed information. There's always gonna be stats freak that build their characters on paper and take everything into account to get to perfection, so you need to cater for them too :)
I'm glad I subscribed to your little game here. I like your optimism, it's getting me excited as well! Good luck on your exams!
That's a really good idea! Thanks a lot :)