Chasing Elysium - Devlog #010 - October Recap
Hey all! It's the end of the month so I figured I'd try writing up a little recap of everything I did for my game, Chasing Elysium, over the course of the month. I imagine this will be a good way to really get a feel for just how much progress I am actually making.
Honestly, there is a chance I might just switch the devlogs to being monthly instead of weekly. Weekly is a lot! Monthly feels like I'd actually have something substantial to say!
Combat
First off, I finished the combat UI. It displays what attacks you have available as well as their names and eventually their icons. When you use an attack and it goes on cooldown, the icon updates to reflect this, including slowly filling in to show how much longer the cooldown will be.
I also got the combat itself working, then promptly broke it to rebuild it more flexibly. Specific attacks are now implemented via Godot's AnimationPlayer nodes allowing for timeline-based attacks with animations and timed hits. This also came with the beginnings of an attack API to allow designers to make intricate setups, both for players and especially for bosses.
The combat work ended up taking about 2/3rds of the month.
Dialogue Editor
A few months back I made a very simple format for storing dialogue trees in JSON. I implemented a reader for this format and used it to power the dialogue boxes that appear in game for cutscenes, character interactions, etc. One point I made was to allow this format to easily integrate with - you guessed it - Godot's AnimationPlayer nodes. Doing this will allow for choreographed cutscenes that naturally pause for dialogue. It feels like a very good basis to work from.
For the last week and a half of the month, I wrote a simple editor in Godot for creating these dialogue files, which I have dubbed "PKScenes" (Pixel Kitty Scenes). As of a couple of days ago it is fully functional!
Miscellaneous
I also got a couple of other small things done. Honestly, one thing. I finally got around to having the speaker name show up on dialogue boxes!
Goals for November
I'm just gonna make this a quick list, and I do not promise I will actually accomplish all of these!
- Port the new PKScene reader/writer code back into the game itself
- Implement the tutorial battles
- Finish the rough draft of the opening sequence
- Begin working on the beginning of the game's first chapter
- Probably I should actually write the first chapter so it's not just thoughts bouncing around my head
- Possibly look into if anyone wants to help with this project? I have one person so far who is interested, but given it is a rather... ambitious project... more help may be wise.