Project Phases Update 8: Shops, Buff and Polish

New Shop

The first big change is the new shop system. If you go north-west from the starting position, you will find a new NPC named Chris. He is the shopkeeper, and talking to him will allow you to access his shop.

In the top left corner of the shop menu, you can see the amount of gold you have. Every item has a price; make sure you have enough gold to buy everything you want. Clicking on any of the options (weapons, armor, or consumables) will allow you to open their respective menus.

There are a plethora of new items, so here is a list of all the names and stats of all of the items currently in the game…

That is a lot of items! There are also some new icons in the menu that represent different stats. From left to right these represent attack, defense, points, time, weapon type, health, speed and gold.

When you hover over an item, you can see how it affects each character at the bottom of the menu. You can also see that item’s description in the bottom right corner. Every item in the game has a description to help bring more life to the game. It also helps you figure out what each item does. Once you are ready to buy an item, simply click on it to purchase it. Then, simply stand back and watch your money (still in the top left corner) fly away…

New Party Menus

If you go into the party tab of the menu, you will see each player listed along with some information about them. A new addition are the expanded party menus. If you click on any of the characters, you will get a more detailed look at each one. Everything you would ever want to know about the characters is in this menu. This includes their stats, attacks and what weapons and armor they have currently equipped.

There is also a small box at the bottom that gets populated with descriptions whenever you hover over anything. Also, you can change any character’s current weapon or armor directly from the party menu instead of having to to the item menu. Simply click on the equipment they currently have equipped to open the menu. From there, you can equip whatever you want. Very handy!

Equip Cancelling

Speaking of equipment, there is a slight change to the equipping process. Whenever you click on some weapon or armor to equip, you can now cancel the equip. This can be useful if you change your mind or click on the wrong thing. If you right-click the mouse at anytime during the equipping process, the equip will cancel. If you don’t know if you are equipping something, look at the cursor; it will be flashing when you are in equip mode. There is also a message in the description box to remind you if you forget. I plan to add a similar mechanic to the battle system, so please stay tuned.

New Area

The final new addition to the overworld is the North Cave, the newest area in the game. It is located up north (crazy right?) next to Chris the shopkeeper. The cave currently consists of 2 floors. On the first floor is a chest, interacting with it allows you to open it to find all its treasure.

While the cave is nice, I am in the process of redoing many of the tiles and sprites for the game. This means that this cave will change significantly visually very soon (more on this at the end of this post), so don’t get too attached to this style.

Description Box

Starting up a battle you will see a big change right away. There is a new box on the bottom of the attack menu which is the description box. Whenever you hover over an attack or item, there will be information about here, just like the overworld version. Just like the items, every attack has also received a unique description.

Arrow Markers

The next change is a UI addition. I have added something I’m calling arrow markers, which mark where every attack will land. These markers appear on all relevant timelines. So, if you select an attack as Daryl on Crocman, a marker will appear on both Daryl’s and Crocman’s timelines, showing when that attack will land. Once you confirm the attack and end the attack phase, the arrow markers will flip over to the other side of the timeline. This helps make room for the arrow up top to move smoothly across the timeline.

The markers don’t always flip over though. If the marker collides with an already-flipped arrow, it will simply remain at the top to avoid clutter. The timelines can get pretty busy with all the markers, so it may be a bit much to look at. If you prefer to hide the markers once you end the attack phase for a cleaner look, you can change the setting in the “Setup” menu at the start of the game. The arrows will appear again during someone else’s attack phase to let you know what is going to happen.

These markers are very useful for strategizing. They also let you worry about the next attack rather than trying to remember what your previous attack was. If you happen to forget what a marker represents, simply hover over it. When you do, information about that attack will appear in the description box. This allows you to easily track which attacks will happen and when. This is a very useful addition, and I’m really happy with how it turned out.

Buffs and Debuffs

As stated earlier, there are many new items in the game. Some of these items can do more than simply restore your health or points. Some items now have buffing and debuffing properties. Buffs are temporary stat boosts that can be used in battle. To apply the effects, simply use an applicable consumable in battle just like any other item. Once the item is used, the effects will be applied. You will see icons appear next to your character to show what stat buffs/debuffs are currently in effect.

In this example, I use the Sugar Packet item which raises my speed by 25 but lowers my attack by 3. Once I use it, icons appear to show my current status.

There is an important rule regarding how long the effects last. If you get the buff/debuff in the attack phase, when you reach the beginning of the next attack phase, the buff will go away. If you get the effects in any other phase, the boost will wear off when you reach that exact point again in the timeline. I did this to avoid having your speed change in the middle of the attack phase. It would be very difficult to check if you would still have a buff when a certain attack happens. It also may just be a bit confusing to the player having drastic speed changes when they are trying to attack. It could still be possible to make it work, so maybe I’ll change this rule later.

Pre-Battle Buffs and Debuffs

The last thing I want to mention about the buffs and debuffs is the ability to use them before a battle. If you go into your inventory and use an item that has stat-boosting properties, the effects will be applied in parenthesis next to the stat.

In this example, I am using Liquid Fire which boosts my attack and speed by 5. You can see “+5” being added in the parenthesis next to attack and speed. Now, at the start of the next battle, the effects will be applied immediately, allowing you to gain an advantage right from the start.

Battle Rewards

If you manage to win a battle, you will be given a reward in the form of gold. Gold can be used to buy more items in the shop. The amount you get is based on how many enemies you defeated. Each enemy randomizes the amount they give when you defeat them. The range is about 40-60 gold per enemy. If you fight more than one enemy, the reward value gets added up. This means, for fighting the 3 enemies currently in the game all at once, you can get an average of 150 gold. Later, I’ll add some sort of experience point system to this reward as well.

Overall Battle Polish

My last main point about the battle system is the overall polish. I have changed the way attacks are calculated a few times now, and the current way is by far the most accurate and easiest to develop. In the previous system, when the attacks landed was controlled by the enemies. Whenever an internal counter was reached and the enemy’s arrow reached a certain point, the attack would be executed. This system worked well but could be inaccurate due to a multitude of reasons. For one, the enemy would wait until both the timer and the arrow reached a certain point. However, thanks to the addition of speed, the timer and the arrow could get slightly desynced and over the course of the battle, attacks would become less and less accurate. Speaking of speed, another problem was that the target value that the enemy was waiting for the arrow to reach wasn’t always accurate to begin with. This was due to the calculation having problems with accounting for speed properly. So basically speed broke a lot of things and I the system was properly accounting for it.

The order of attacks would also get messed up. If one player didn’t attack for whatever reason, the whole system would break. In general, the order system would break randomly. It would have attacks not attacking at the right time or making everything attack all at once, it was awful. The final problem with the old system was that because the enemies controlled the attacks, I would have to program attack calculations for every enemy. This means I could be writing the same code over and over for potentially hundreds of enemies.

Thankfully, the new system fixes many of these problems. Now, the attacks are all controlled by the players that used them. This makes way more sense, and it really should have been like this from the beginning. This also means I may only need to program attack calculation code for a handful of objects rather than hundreds.

This system is also more accurate. It makes use of the new arrow markers, so what you see is what you get (to an extent; I’ll get to that in a second). Whenever the player arrow reaches a marker on the timeline, it will execute that attack. Each player controls their own attacks, making any order issues much more manageable. In general, the new system is more reliable and polished. However, there are three big problems I am still trying to figure out.

One, framerate inconsistencies. If the framerate happens to dip or stutter a bit when an attack is supposed to happen, it will just skip the attack, breaking the system. This one should be an easy fix; I just need to find out what is causing the inconsistencies in the first place and then patch it up with some framerate flexible code (using delta time).

Second problem, looping around the timeline can sometimes be wrong. It really depends on the situation, but for some reason when an attack loops around the timeline, it can either be outside of the timeline or too far ahead. Again, this should be a simple fix. I’m guessing something is wrong with my calculations that I haven’t caught yet. However, I think the fix for this may come once I fix the biggest problem.

By far, the worst problem is the enemy’s future arrow. This is where the future arrow marker appears on the enemy timeline. This is very important to get right because if it isn’t, it could be the difference between a defend phase and a wait phase. Something is just off about the calculation and, again, it has to do with speed. The system doesn’t accommodate speed enough, so sometimes the arrow placement could be shockingly early or embarrassingly late. I have tried every equation I can think of to no avail. The code I left for this update is a bandage fix that is close to correct, but not close enough. You can see what I mean if you watch some of the battle sections in the update video. I’m pretty sure once I fix this, my loop problem will fix itself too.

Smaller Battle Changes

Real quick, I want to mention some important but smaller changes/additions that have been made.

• When you loop around the timeline, the point reward you receive has been brought down to 2 (it was 3 before). This is to make skip more punishing by making you lose 1 point every time you use it, regardless of the loop. This is so people don’t just spam skip as an insta-win button.
• The future colors are more accurate now. As a reminder, anything relating to the future will turn purple. Now, most things will only turn purple when they are changed, to show that they will be affected in the future rather than turning purple at the beginning of the phase regardless of if they change or not.
• You can now only select targets that can be affected by a move. For example, you can only use items on the players and not the enemies. If you try to select an enemy, it simply won’t let you. The same thing goes for most attacks; they can only target the enemies and not any of the players.
• Before, the effects of healing moves (such as Heal, Choice Heal etc.) would be determined by your attack stat. Healing moves now have a fixed amount of healing power. This means attacks like Heal will always heal 5 HP regardless of your attack stat.
• When you use an item, the name of the item floats by rather than the direct effects of that item. This is to avoid a huge clutter of numbers flying all over the place.