Week Three: Coming Together

Let's start with a screenshot!

A lot has changed since this same screenshot last week. See how many changes you can spot!

Progress

Made a lot of progress this week. I finished all the equips needed for the alpha, implemented the quest system, and implemented battle events.

I'd wanted to get more other events done, but I've found making events to be both creatively and technically difficult.

• Coming up with ideas for events is hard
• Most events (at this stage) require new functionality I have to implement

I have a short list of event types that need to exist, and a few different events written but not implemented, so the goal for next week is still to hit near the original target amount.

I also implemented a lot of quality of life features, and 28 cards that didn't have art last week now do!

Overworld

As you can see from the first screenshot, the map view has changed a lot:

• The map art has been completely redone
• The map can contain quests! (This screenshot shows a quest to the north of the party that must be completed within two days.)
• Character stats are displayed
• Our fighter now has her starting weapon

Equips

A total of 20 equips are now in the game! See if you can guess what they do from just the pictures?

Cards (64)

There are a few new cards this week (from equips that generate cards) but most of the changes to the card library are from additional art assets. I didn't originally intend to do so much card art this week, but it seemed a good alternative when I was hitting writer's block on events.

Progress/Next Steps

Tracking against the alpha checklist:

Done/In Progress:

• 20 more Equips
• 10 enemies
• Quest System
• Equipment cards (7)
• 4/60 Events (mainly battle events) but with 10 more written but unimplemented

Also Needed:

There's some needed features that I didn't list last week, but actually are required for the alpha.

• Show character stats
• Curse cards
• Make the map not hideous (Doesn't seem required, but totally was)
• Player sprites
• Allow reordering party (some cards effects depend on party order)
• Enemy move/stat hover info
• View deck/draw/discard
• Show party overview in a top bar: characters, gold, plot coupon progress, deck count, etc.
• Lifecycle: player death, defeat, victory!
• Redo health bar display (It's really hard to read right now)
• Some placeholder attack animations (nothing fancy, just enough to track what's happening)

Unstarted:

• 2 more Characters (Artificer & Necromeowncer)
  • With 60 total cards
• 1 boss (& boss quest)
• Shops
  • may get bumped to post alpha
• Town Events (a special advanced event type)
  • may get bumped to post alpha

Conclusion

I really want to have 4 characters for the alpha, but it's looking pretty unlikely based on how long things took the past couple weeks. Shops and Town Events are also looking pretty likely to get cut. But, at the end of the day, getting the core game loop in front of alpha testers is more important than any individual feature.