Gamedev blog 10: A fresh set of eyes

It's been a very long time since I've last worked on my game. The last gamedev post I made is from 9 months ago. It seems I neglected to keep my work log, as it states the last time I worked on my game was 11 months ago. Either case, very long ago.

Today I loaded up my game in unity3d and played around with it, and quickly ran into how bad my current implementation feels. Resting allows the player to save up energy without limit and and then attack twice for each enemy attack, since the game loop waits for input both after an enemy attack and after an enemy rest.

I quickly came to the conclusion that it makes no sense to load up on energy, and rather to use an energy deficit system. If the player makes an action that would cost 1 energy, it will now need 1 turn to recover. If the player makes an action that requires 3 energy, it will now take 3 turns to recover. The player will only be prompted for input if they have 0 exhaustion.

This system is much more intuitive and doesn't allow the player to hoard energy, as the best state they can be in is 0 exhaustion.

Only after I implemented it did I think to go back to my last post and read up on where I left off. Turns out, I encountered the problem, but had no clear solution. A fresh set of eyes can really solve a problem fast. Though it certainly doesn't require 9 months. A week might have done the job.

While testing the new feel I found an odd behavior. The log would show: Troll moved. Ask me for an input, then show pixie moved, and then Player moved. Somehow the pixie moved before me even though I just took an action. Turns out it was a bug with the rolling log not showing the last line. Easy fix.

Lastly, it was quite a pain to read the rolling log, so I decided to add some color coding. Which has a bonus of allowing me to add a screenshot with some visual changes.

I'm hoping I'm back on track and will have the muse to continue developing and writing posts.

If you've missed my previous posts, here they are:
Gamedev blog 1: Brewing an idea
Gamedev blog 2: Birthing pains
Gamedev blog 3: It’s checklist time
Gamedev blog 4: The world
Gamedev blog 5: Mockup
Gamedev blog 6: Threat indicators
Gamedev blog 7: Pointlessness
Gamedev blog 8: Information and interactivity
Gamedev blog 9: The system is perfect and flawed