Devlog No.017

I have been quite busy working on commissions to make ends meet and so far I've been fairly successful. Things are going well enough in spite of some personal events which happened over the past week, though they didn't have a huge impact on me. (Aside from having to work at my desk with wet socks a a couple times.)

But with the game, there isn't a ton to report, though that should be expected this time around. With that said, I still made some good progress and fixed a few bugs actually.

I had spoken previously about a new weapon and I'm happy to say that it's now fully implemented. I made a short video which I will upload after this devlog. It shows off the functionality of the weapon as well as the new heal spell that I added in previously. (If you take close note you will see a bug with the charge card colors at one point. Don't worry, I fixed that already, but didn't want to re-record the video for something so minor)

Charge Cards act a bit like megaman's charge up blaster, though less mobile. I also directly took inspiration from megaman's charge up so for anyone who likes megaman you can see the similarity. You will still have to halt your forward momentum to use them though. I MIGHT go back and change this to have no movement restrictions later, but the reason I didn't for now was specifically for animation purposes. I could make it so Aria just doesn't animate at all when she throws the cards while moving, but I want to see how they fare like this first. Reasoning being that you can still be mobile while you are charging the heavy shot and you can rapid fire the basic shot.

It functions simply, press the attack button for a weak rapid fire card attack or hold the button down until you begin to flash and release for a powerful card blast. Currently the basic attack is very weak. I believe I have it set to 1 damage (Same damage at lvl 1 orb or a single hit from a spread shot) and 1.4 damage at highest level. However the attack speed is fairly high and attacks quite quickly.

The trade off to the faster attack speed is that the stun duration is halved for the basic card attack so larger number of enemies can more easily overwhelm you. In it's current state it's better against single targets. And that's even true of the charge up damage. I believe I have it set to 3 at min and 4 at max. Blaster I believe is 3 min and 5 max. I did worry a bit about the blaster, but did remember that the blaster also does a small aoe and can do quite well against tightly grouped up enemies and also has the wide lock on.

I guess this is a situation to wait and see how things go. I can also add weapon upgrades to offset things too of course. For blaster I plan to add some things like reduced kickback and faster charge among other things. In the case of charge cards I haven't thought of anything definitive. I may have an upgrade that allows to pierce a target for example or I may make the aforementioned attack while moving an upgrade, but nothing is in stone yet.

I also mentioned fixing a bug earlier. The bug has to do with ammo count. The way I programmed the game is that it has an ammo system. When picking up a weapon, it sets your ammo max to the weapon's ammo max. You can fire up to the ammo max number of times before you will fire blanks. After a projectile is expended/destroyed, it restores the ammo to you. (In the case of spread projectiles, it has a single hidden entity that handles the projectiles and will only return ammo once all of the projectiles impact) (Also the grahstery has it's own special system contained within the lantern. It doesn't have ammo, the lantern does. Aria just fires from the lantern. So long as the lantern doesn't bug out, it will slowly restore grahsts)

Anyway, the bug is hard to replicate with most weapons, but the blaster it's easy. You just fire while moving into a transformation item and it will remove the ammo, but not fire the projectile. This can soft lock you until you pick up another weapon. With the new code I put in, it effectively constantly tries to refill your ammo to max, but anytime you use ammo, the counter resets to zero. So if you are rapid firing, the new system won't fill up because anytime you expend ammo, it will reset the counter. But if you soft lock with 0 ammo, it will slowly count up and eventually trigger a max ammo restore. It's only a few seconds too so you should only notice it if you specifically bug your ammo out. And half the time you spend 'getting' bugged out, the timer will be running. You won't even notice it if you turn into a blueberry.

At least you SHOULDN'T notice it. So long as I did a good job that is!


Only other thing I can think to report on is that I polished a few of the levels at in between times. Not really anything major though. I am hoping that my next report will include a new implemented enemy type, but I would prefer two. My situation is still tenuous, but due to the help of Patrons it's really helping my longevity a lot!