Dev Blog #2

Wednesday May 22, 2013

This past week Matt and I finalized the level editor for our game. It was a major triumph seeing the output from the editor in the correct format, after coding the save function once. The only change I had to make to that function was making it output the actual number, not the data stored in memory at that location. Minor flaw, but nonetheless it was practically a one shot success. In programming, nothing feels better than getting something right the first time.

I ended up rewriting the whole battle system, which included moving the damage calculations out of the battle state and putting them into the player and monster base classes. This gives direct access to the stats of each entity, instead of having to access them in long strings of function calls in the battle state. I also had to rewrite some other functions inside the player and monster classes, which meant moving some of them into the base Entity class, of which monster and player are extended. Simple ones that every class needed to have, so the move was inevitable and I am glad I did it now.

For next week, Matt and I are going to finalize the text parser we have for reading in data, creating an area for the QA testing portion of the class that will include enemies and an area boss and creating some assets. The player will be able to level up in this testing area so we can tweak the leveling process.

The leveling process was written by me haphazardly. I found some formulas online for experience gain and experience needed for the next level, and I adjusted one of them to output much less experience. Basically, I cut it in half.

More next week after we get the testing level set up and ready to go.