This Weeks Progress

Knott and the Waking Wilds

Goal 1: Context - Carry

Probably the biggest thing this week was setting up a part of the context button, the carry system itself. The backpack entity now has an additional slot it can look after called the Carry Slot. These are for… you guessed it… Carry Items

Carry Items are for pots, rocks and objects allowing you to run around with a pot over your head and throw objects at whatever you like. Additional goodies and items can be attached to fragile items in the editor to allow them to spawn when destroyed. Other carry items such as cannonballs can be carried around and thrown around indefinitely. Depending on the weight of the item and your strength stat your character may struggle to pick up or move around quickly with it.

Goal 2 and 3: Context - Read and Talk

Read and Talk were pretty easy to set up. I already have the player scanning the ground around them for objects and items to interact with.

If the player finds an Entity with the get_talk() or get_read() function. Context is set to talk and read. Talk and Read will need to rely on the text box working. Which is going to need to be set up another week. It is important, but not a gameplay priority at this point.

Extra: Carry Key’s

With carry items working I was able to start work on keys, Keys unlock doors. Shocking I know. Key’s were originally planned to be an inventory item. The conversion to carry items is so that in coop one player isn’t limited to being “The Key Bitch.” By allowing all players to carry around the keys by hand independently, it still allows them to have an item or weapon.

I have also created doors for the keys to work on, These both work via walking into the door or throwing it into the lock. I still need to make a nicer animation for when the keys are consumed. As well as a tracker to know what keys have been used in a dungeon.

Extra: Modifiers [Buffs and Debuffs]

This was really cool to whip together, I have made a modular dictionary that adds and removes modifiers. This works by instead of keeping track of every debuff, It will only add the modifier to the dictionary when it applies and removes it from the dictionary automatically when expired. If the time requested to add is more than in the dictionary it will update the time. This is a lot nicer than having a wall of every modifier in existence in a massive “else if” chain. With this I was able to add a modifier to slow entities walking through water.

Next Weeks Goals

Cintrianna’s Forge

Goal 1: New Menu

The menu for the most part is garbage., I REALLY don’t like it and have had multiple testers and users report confusion when playing for the first time. I want to resize the buttons and reposition them to put a focus on the main mode and show a new view for the challenge mode. While it does not need to be submitted for review, I would still like it done.

Knott and the Waking Wilds

Goal 2: Implement Knock-back 2.0

The knock-back system was kind of slapped together as I just wanted something in place and it wasn’t a great implementation. Even now the code throws errors here and there due to janky knock-back code. I have a singleton thats in control of calling and comparing attacks and I want to roll the knock-back code into it.

Goal 3: Fall Tiles

Here is a classic. I want to set up zones for fall tiles, just like in Link’s awakening. My goal is to get general entities to fall when they drop down into a pit. I want to do items and carry objects too but that can wait for another time. As a temporary placeholder I will simply teleport the player back 5 seconds instead of the doorway. Rooms and cameras are going to be needed to be tackled together, so I won’t touch them just yet.

Recommendations

Hardcore History

I am also thinking it would be fun to make a recommendation section. A little extra something I enjoyed either another video game, video, podcast or something different entirely. I recently had another listen to Tools of Titans by Tim Ferris. If you want a kick in the ass motivation-wise that is the book to read/listen too. However in the book, many of the people mentioned all recommend the Hardcore History Podcast by Dan Carlin. During my day job, I gave it a try and was hooked while traveling from client to client. The episode below is on the story of Philip the 2nd (Alexander the Great’s Father.) Great piece and I highly recommend it!