Devlog 4: More Spells (07/10 - 11/10)

As a break from the more difficult features, this week returned to some simpler, yet much needed items.

TL;DR: Slightly refactored and created more useful parts for the Spell system, making 2.5 new Spells in the process.

Chapters

1. MORE!
2. Known Bugs & Issues

MOAR!

Continuing on from week 2 (see Devlog 2), this week some more new Spells were made, mostly with the intention to supply the player with a greater array for the upcoming testing week.

The main focus was the Arcane Seeker Spell, which smoothly pursues its target as if it has a mind of its own. Despite the impressive appearance and functions of this Spell, implementation went surprisingly smoothly given its scope and the time spent. Arcane Seeker required three key features to function as desired: the ability to home toward the centre of the target's Collider, an initial spell velocity rotated 90° from the target direction, and movement which gradually blended between the initial velocity and the target direction. At first, the homing feature naively utilised the Transform Component of the target to follow Creatures as they moved, but targeting had issues with missing or destroyed targets and the (gosh darn) ensmallened Custom Physics Shapes. To resolve this, each Creature was made a proud Parent of a [[HeartShapedObject]], which would be purposely placed to route Spells toward the centre of the Collider consistantly, admist other helpful conditional logic changes. Lastly, to get perpendicular velocity blended with the target direction Vector (I love the fact the URL dubs this the VectorCookbook), multiple AnimationCurves were cheekily used as continuous variables.

On a lesser note, a Scratch Spell was also made for Creatures to "cast" in place of the previous collision based melee attack system (notably for the ghost). An explosive fireball attack was also begun, but not quite finished in time for this week. While there are many other Spell ideas and stat adjustments that could be made, there are other plans allotted for the final two weeks before the break.

A demonstration of the two new functional spells. Note that while the oscillation shows the homing abilities of the Arcane Seekers, this interaction was unintended and patched out.

Known Bugs & Issues

No new fixes this week.

• (From week 1) Damage values are being dealt to the wrong Creatures (e.g. ghost attacks should deal 1 damage, but right now ghosts only take 1 damage when hurt).  ->  Melee attacks are currently (and likely permanently) disabled.
• (From week 1) Creatures can occupy the same Tile (and phase into terrain), due to relaxed restrictions.  ->  Attemped to be resolved (outlined in Chapter 2), and while Creature collisions seem better, it still seems too relaxed with dashing into terrain.
• (From week 1) Cameras move slowly when returning from left and right boundaries.
• (From week 1) Health bars could be on a World Space UI Canvas.
• (From week 1) Wizard turns weirdly sometimes when moving diagonally.
• (From week 2) Rapidly casting Spells lags the game a bit.
• (From week 2) When firing a Spell exactly at (0, 0), the game slows significantly.  ->  Likely resolved, thanks to some helpful pointers :)
• (From week 3) Colliding with a Creature (notably the lich) before it moves causes teleporting, due to improperly saved Tile data.