August dev update 01!

I haven't had as much time as last week, but I managed to make some inroads into the Assassin characters' UI.

The Assassin has a very specific moveset, which would not be properly represented by the player flailing around clicking the mouse. So in order to make them feel like a deadly killer who knows how to strike enemies, they go into a 'focus' mode where they choose which bodypart to target.

Each bodypart has one or more strikes that can be performed there, and each strike has a points cost. The Assassin starts off able to string together attacks up to a maximum of 3 "points" (haven't named this stuff yet), and learns new moves and increases their skill level as they progress.

To show this, there is an in-game UI which appears over the enemies when a bodypart is targeted. This week I have been putting together the system in the background that displays the right name(s) for the bodypart targeted, the cost of the attack, whether it's a finishing move (it will end the chain early) and whether the move will kill the current enemy.

So, this unfortunate enemy is going to get his throat slashed - a low level move that costs one point. However, if the player has found and learned 'Chin Stab', this move gets added to the list and can be selected. But as we can see, this move costs two points, and is a finishing move:

And all this UI stuff is put together on the fly with a system that I've tried to make as generic as possible to avoid duplicating code.

It's not finished yet, and I've still to hook it into the attack chain UI (which you can spot at the bottom of the second screenshot) which shows the player how many moves they have already used, and whether the currently selected attack can be performed or not.

Now I already knew this, but being in the middle of it myself, there is an important lesson here: don't underestimate what is needed to get your UI working! Even something as relatively simple as this is a nightmare to manage and get working, so go in knowing that the UI will always take longer than planned.

Tony.