Epyo

September 25: ~381 hours in
I decided that if an item is on a diagonal shadow, it should be fully visible.

Many other visual changes I'm extremely happy with:
Once you see a tile, you see it permanently. This was how it was when I started the game, then I changed it to be constantly dark, and now it is this again. The nice thing about this is that it feels good to uncover tiles of the level, and they stay that way. But the main reason I did it was because all the black everywhere was confusing. You'd walk along a hallway and there'd be strange black shadows everywhere. No matter where you stood, you were guaranteed to see a few.

That took a couple of hours. Mostly because originally, when I programmed the diagonals a couple of weeks ago, they were programmed to just last a few seconds until the player moved off a tile. Then all diagonals were removed, and perhaps added in again. But now, diagonals need to be perhaps permanent until the blocks next to them are fully visible.

Lastly, I improved some inefficiencies in the rendering. For example, whenever the tiles on screen are refreshed, previously I went through every tile in the level and made sure it was removed, and perhaps added in again in a second. Now, I just keep track of the coordinate range of the tiles that were added in in the previous refresh, and remove those, but only if they are not going to be inside the coordinates of this refresh, then they stay.

A new level is added, and you spawn in it, but there's nothing in it right now, and it's basically a big field with textures from level 1. There's my first attempt at a brick texture too. This level I'm very excited about. It's going to be a spooky village with skeletons, zombies, and eyeballs. The buildings will be randomized.

Oh, and I almost forgot, in level 1, (west of spawn now), there's a few spots where prefabs appear. There's only 3 possible places, and only 3 different randomly chosen prefabs right now. Basically they're just random arrangements of strange white stone square tiles, supposed to look like ruins. Anyway, I'll flesh that out soon. I'll be working on that and the village for the next couple of weeks.

Oh jeez and also, the game is by default in WASD/arrowkeyz + mouse-to-shoot mode. There's an options tab where you can change back to mouse only mode. So that's cool.

September 25: ~385 hours in

New level has new textures? It's all grey and black and weird and stuff. Building still looks dumb for now. Also, zombies are back, and they look better and act better. Their hands glow a bit, and they don't pull em out until they're aggro'd. There's some eyeballs in the new level too. I'm gonna make it so that they don't shoot those weird blue things, they're going to sort of have an aoe lightning instead. Essentially melee, really.

Now, I'm concerned about performance again, so if anyone has time, test the game out and tell me if it's a bit choppy (or if the controls lag a bit every once in a while). On high quality it's basically unplayable, at least on my laptop. Medium, it should be fine. Low, it should work on any computer, maybe with a touch of lag on an old computer. If this is all true, I'm good, otherwise, I need to work on this more. Right click changes quality, I gotta put that in the options tab soon.

Up next: more buildings, changed eyeball, more work on new textures in this level.

November 2: ~405 hours in

Progress is slow because of school =[ makes me very sad. Abstract Algebra is tough.

During the past month I just worked on the wetlands level generation, it's pretty great now. Four prefabs spawn, with paths between them. It's nice.

But before I work on levels more, I need to get my items straightened out. The hardest part of making this game is levels, the second hardest is items/weapons. (Enemies are the most fun to make)

So, today I implemented the Serpent Staff!!!! From Hexen!! I effing love hexen. I took a couple of liberties with it, however, so if you're going to go give it a play, don't get tooo mad. It starts off with a swinging-motion, because I tried a stabby-motion but it was sort of questionable. The swinging makes more sense and is more visible. The swinging heals you for 1hp. It does a lot of damage. The projectiles do a little bit. This is the opposite of real hexen, where the melee heals but does little damage, and the projectile is the meat.

It always starts with a swing, and then it may continue swinging if an enemy is in range, otherwise it will start shooting at a constant rate, unless it feels an enemy, in which case it will start swinging again, or if you let go of the mouse button, the player will put it away.

Work on the serpent staff was about 5 hours in total, but it's my favorite thing from hexen, so it was very enjoyable.

Up next: I never seem to actually follow through on the "up next" portion, but what's next is the rest of the weapons, and the rest of the items. I programmed in pickupable torches that you can put down, now I want to put in an orb that you can put down that will see through walls around it. That's an example of another weapon. I still have other secondaries to make too...

As for weapons: 2h axe, 1h axe, energy saber, can't remember the others that are on the way. maybe more hexen stuff.


-------

November 7: ~410 hours in

Today I did something I've been putting off for like 6 months. I added the universal death animation. Basically this animation happens whenever an enemy dies, it looks like their blood disintegrates. I wanted to have this so that enemies don't simply disappear when dead. Although, they didn't really disappear, because the normal bloodspurts were left behind (from any damage). So now it looks like a rocket explosion from doom basically.

I also worked a lot more on the serpent staff, and I wouldn't quiiiiite call it done. In fact, my girlfriend told me it should actually shoot snakes like snake man's weapon in mega man 3. I think I should probably do that because that is a fantastic idea.

-------

November 11: ~414 hours in

Don't remember what I did a few days ago but just now I worked on elements more! The elements window is a bit nicer. There are mouse over effects when you can click stuff. And now, you can drag elements from the stash at the bottom to your weapons (provided you have weapons that are not "Weak-" which you can get if you walk to the right a second), but you can also drag around the elements within the weapons, and drag them back to the stash. Of course, you can just drop them anywhere and they'll go back to the stash, you can't just lose elements. Even if you take off your weapon, the elements should go back to the stash automatically.

Also added the 10th and hopefully final element. It could use polish, but it works, it's called the "Mind Element", or maybe it should be the "Confuse Element". What it does, is, it lasts 3 seconds, and if the enemy tries to attack you, it aims in entirely the wrong direction. Probably.

But it's not overpowered, because sometimes they will shoot right at you. It's just like the partial invis in Doom--it can help, but it also just screws up your dodging sometimes and hurts you. Plus, it only lasts 3 seconds, unless you keep hitting them with it. With most weapons, you're probably hitting once per second. But if it's a heavy hitter like the axe (hope to get that in soon) then Mind might not be a great choice.

Still not sure if Weak- weapons should be allowed to use elements. Right now, the idea is, Normal weapons can use elements, Weak- ones can't, and Strong- ones have some sort of special thing about them. For example, Strong Pistol will actually mean one pistol in both hands. That's not done yet though. The Strong Sword is a lot longer ranged. That's in the game already! The different wands have more bolts, same with the shotgun.