SFPC - August Combat Test Video #5

This week the big new feature is combat animations!  They're still pretty basic, no weapon graphics yet, I need to improve the item code a lot first before that happens, but aside from all the punching going on, things look pretty good! 

SFPC - August Combat Test Video #4

Another productive weekend!  Lots of bug fixing, under the hood changes, and asset ripping, but a handful of new stuff as well, hence the video.  Scrolling text may look simple to the untrained eye, a little thing we all take for granted, but it took a good bit of work to get it looking right and behaving alongside everything else.  Battle movement has also received a tune up, characters can move through (but not stop in) squares occupied by allies, and enemy squares are excluded from movement range calculations.

SFPC - August Combat Test Video #3

Another month, another video!  Usually I code for an hour or two here and there, typically in the morning before work, but today I got totally in the zone and put in something like 10+ hours!  Got so much done!  Combat is in a much better state now, cleaned up the existing battle code a ton, the new system is a lot more robust and easier for me to expand upon.  New features since last time include:

- Battlefield Land Effect and Stats windows
- Basic Cutscenes (no character animations) with fade transitions
- Auto-advancing text windows in cutscenes
- Critical hits and double attacks
- Music switching into and out of cutscenes

I also made tons of changes behind the scenes I won't drone on about, but one last thing worth mentioning that I did start on was damage types (physical, fire, cold, etc).  They're not taken into account for resistances or anything just yet, but the skeleton is there!

Obviously the next big milestone is going to be combat animations.  Ideally I can have basic animation up and running for the next video, hopefully before September, but we'll see how things go.  I also have lots of research ahead of me on getting my numbers right for calculating hits, misses, damage, special attack rates, and so on.  Heck, I might be open to taking on a volunteer to help do a lot of that kind of digging for me.  If anyone's interested, shoot me an email or leave a comment!