Combat Core Implementation

Progress This Week

• This week, I focused on setting up the core systems and mechanics for the combat system, with a turn management system, basic attack functionality for the heroes, and some basic animations for attack feedback.
• Combat Systems
  • Basic Attack
    • I implemented basic attack functionality for hero cards. Currently they are able to do damage to an enemy by first selecting the hero card, then clicking on an enemy card.
    • The current implementation of the basic attack does the hero cards attack stat as damage to the enemy card, there is currently no damage reduction calculation based on the enemies armour stat.
    • On the damage taken from the basic attack, the health stat of the enemy card will update with the new health value after the calculation of the damage has been completed.
  • Basic attack animation and Hit Feedback
    • Animations for the basic attack have been created, where the hero card will move at speed and hit the targeted enemy card, before returning to their original location.
    • On damage taken by the basic attack, the enemy cards will shake aggressively for a short duration to signal that they have taken damage from one of the hero cards.
• Turn Management Systems
  • Turn Management System
    • I implemented a speed-based turn management system, currently only for the heroes, where hero cards take turns by descending order of current speed, which will allow for future speed scaling.
    • Once all hero cards have taken their turn, the order will be reset and the turns will commence once more in descending order of current speed.
    • Additionally, when two hero cards posses the same speed, either one may be selected and used in either order. However, at the moment, either card can make two turns, skipping the other cards turn, instead of each only being able to make one turn (this is a bug).
  • Hover Card System Changes
    • As there is no longer a need to hover over a hero card, due to the turn based system showing you available cards to play, the hover mechanism has been removed for the hero cards.
    • The cards that are in play during the current turn will be scaled as they originally were when hovered, then they will scale again when selected, to indicate that the card has been selected and is ready to make an action.

Above showcases the new spawn animation for the cards, a basic attack made by the hero card to the left against the second enemy card from the left. This also showcases the new hero card scaling and selection system, hit feedback animation, as well as the health stat on the enemy card being reduced by the attack stat of the hero card.

• Possible Improvements
  • Combat Systems
    • The basic attack will eventually take into consideration the enemy armour, so that tankier enemies will be harder to kill than lighter armoured mages and thieves. This will also amplify the importance of managing the Shadow Mage’s future debuff abilities.
    • Ability systems
      • Hero abilities will be added to help augment the combat system and add to the strategy focus of the game.
  • Turn Management System
    • Enemies will also be able to make turns where they can also attack a random hero card based on the descending order of hero and enemies speed stats. If hero card’s speeds match that of the enemy card’s speeds, the heroes will gain favourability in the turn order.
    • I will resolve the the bug present when two heroes possess the same speed, so that they can still only make one action a turn.
  • Hover Card System Changes
    • Based on feedback from the tutorials, I aim to implement a shader to fade out cards that are non-selectable, to further aid the player in distinguishing between cards that are actively playable, and ones that aren’t able to perform an action during the current turn.
  • Additionally, brief instructions on how to play the game will be added to the itch.io page to explain the gameplay mechanics and systems to the player, and later on, may also be added to a menu within the game itself.