Devlog combat (Patreon)

Hey, everyone!

Another huge thankyou to all my patrons! This project is moving forward because of all of you! It gives me the resources and the energy to make this something special.

So the combat system is now well under way. I know this is taking a little bit of time but I"m trying to save time in the long run. This is one system that is very easy to break/expoit or cause any number of issues.

So the image above is the current state. It's the same underlying system but has been expanded to support proper visuals and a nice way to add attack effects and animations.

The idea is I can combine things like effects (like the fire) and animations to create the abilities. Obviusly I'm just playing around at the moment but I have the framework to create what  I need.

The past few days has been an absolute chunk of errors, infinite loops and I had to learn some programming techniques I hadn't used before. The biggest challenge has been the temptation  to take the easy way to do some of these things but I know from experience many of these shortcuts will come back to haunt me.

But the good news is I have the core working. I've sort of cracked the most difficult part and I have a clear order of operations and even in it's earlist state you can get a good picture of what I'm building towards!

I still need to hook in
Level systems
NPC AI
A full interface/battle setup

After playing around I realised I'm going to need text popups to tell you what's happening.
Text Popups in battle
Character Deaths
Using Items
Battle End conditions (Run, Loose, Win)
Health bars
Main game integration

The hope is once I have those core elements working I can create abilities and enemies quickly and use that to build content for all the game encounters.

Ideas
So after playing around with the system I'll probably add a few more human vs human battles in as well as the ghosts. The system for human fights has to be built to allow the player to participate so it's not more difficult to add them into the game.

I think some people suggested it but this could be an interesting way to interact with certain characters or rivals. Sort of give some aspects a little bit of a Harry Potter vibe, allowing you to battle with other students at the Uni.

I've always planned for the other students to be ghost hunting like you/working with you so it would make sense that they have powers and might also fight.

Playing around with this system is helping me to understand a great deal about how I want the combat to work. I'm thinking of having up to 6-8 active ability slots. Possibly unlocking more ability slots as you go.

One thing I've realised I don't have is passive abilities. I'm going to do a little bit of experimenting to see if there is a way for me to create passive powers that you can't activate but always take effect. I might be able to support this using my existing system, but I"ll have to check.

I have alot to work on so I'm going to get back to it and will hopefully have knocked a few items off my list for my next update!