The Timeline System, they who were forgotten

Over the past weeks, i have had an absurdly hard time making the damn timeline of the game work. Originally, i hoped it would be shoved into making the battling system itself work as a whole, but i was unfortunately wrong.

Fortunately tho, it now works properly. Albeit it now takes the system that bugged the hardest during production crown. (It's completely stable now, but goddamn was it bad)

The Battle Stage System, AkA the slapping contest

SotML's battle system works like this :

Phase 1 - The A.I will pick a move and place it on the timeline. The enemy sprite will then go through a quick animation to give you a hint as to what the A.I is planning to do. (Move slightly in one direction, color change, perhaps an actual animation.. Those are the things you'll want to keep an eye out for.)

Phase 2 - You, as the player, will now decide what to do and place your moves on the timeline.

Phase 3 - Both character will now hit one another over the course of the timeline, based off the moves both you and the A.I will have chosen.

Phase 4 - The "Turn" will conclude, all DoTs/Passive will go off and reduce their counter by 1turn, and then we'll return back to phase 01. If the third turn concludes, meaning the current "Round" is over, all arrows will also reset to becoming actionable once again. (See previous devlog)

Fun fact, you can also only lose on Phase 04's end. Meaning it is possible for your Health to go down to 0, but then restore itself thanks to a passive before the fight is considered over. (When you'll fight the vampire queen, you'll know exactly what i'm talking about.)

Currently, Phase 2 & 4 are fully working, (thanks to the damn timeline now working correctly) all while Phase 01 has the basic building blocks all prepared for itself as well. (Everything the A.I would use to pick it's moves is coded in. Now we would just need the A.I itself to make it work.)

Thus, the next thing i am now going to work on is going to be the Battle Stage phase, or phase 03. Once this one's done as well, we can finally move on to the A.I.

Speaking of the A.I, wasn't that the next phase last time?

Good question Billy. Yes it was, i had started planning out the A.I using my notes when i realized i had forgotten to add in the timeline system beforehand, which the A.I is reliant on in order to work.

Currently, something inside me is telling me i should code the A.I first before doing the Battlestage Phase.. But every time i listen to that something, Stupid stuff happens. So screw it. This time, i'm doing the A.I last.

Once the Battle Stage will work, i will then create a simple A.I that hit you at random in order to showcase the SotML battle system in an actual video, which i'll post on the Cz Studios channel.

Then i'll move on to coding the A.I itself. This will be the last thing i require to code for the Alpha of the game, as what will follow will be designing the game's SFX/BGM and particle effects/Animations.

Currently, judging by how things are advancing, i'd say the Alpha should be out before the end of the year. It will contain one fight, but the experience will have all the features i had announced inside of it. (Passive System, skills, weapon, ring controller, high quality A.I and all the SFX/BGM, etc.. inside of it)

So yeah. That's pretty much where i am right now. I hope y'all get a great day, and i'll see you soon enough as always.