Switching Gears

I actually have a good amount to talk about this week I feel. This week I began digging into the node.js course on Codecademy and so far it's looking to be very useful. Go figure right? It has mostly been talking about server related things but it solves a problem I wasn't sure how to go about originally. That is, waiting for and responding to user input. It just does it on its own! So with that problem being solved, how has the progress come on those personal projects come? 

I realized I didn't care enough to work on them at all lol. I wanted to make a unique alarm clock and when I went through all of the features of JavaScript's built in Date object I realized it was going to be rather frivolous with what I know now. I would have needed to make it an app along with some other things that I have no ideas about, I just figured it would be best to move on from the idea for now. 

A while ago, I mentioned that I was "semi-competent" at art, well this week I decided to put stylus to tablet and make a prototype body to use for testing when I get to having the UI set up. I'm about 50% satisfied with it. I'll probably fix the proportions up to my liking when I get to actually using it but for now it'll be what it is. 

So this week I was thinking about rewards and punishments for successful and unsuccessful trips into the tower. I mentioned a hub world in an earlier dev log as well. Well, I have a plan for how I want it to all work now. So, basically you are a spirit that is resurrected by a powerful sorcerer and have been tasked with... climbing the tower...? That part still needs work. But! You can't do that very well without a tangible body, so the sorcerer allows you to create an avatar to your specifications. (Character creation) With this avatar, you can actually fight the foes within. When you are defeated, your avatar will most likely be captured indefinitely. But that's no issue as you are but a spirit. Once you accept your loss, you can simply return to the sorcerer's sanctum. They can give you another avatar to be created as you please. 

This is the primary way the player goes in and comes out. Not hard to understand I hope. I was thinking though, there's not much opportunity for punishing the player for their defeat. So I thought some enemies could have something of a "curse of binding" that makes it so you can't change some physical attributes to avatars when you decide how you want them right away. There will of course be ways to undo the changes. Speaking of changes, Soul fragments!

Soul fragments will be a rare reward found within the tower that can be used to enhance avatars when you customize them. You can change things from their appearance (larger assets, longer hair, ect,) and more importantly, increase their stats! That's right, you can spend these soul fragments to make the game easier. As they are soul fragments, you absorb them and store them within yourself. Soul fragments can be given and spent as well. The sorcerer has many possible uses for them surely. This whole system is a different take on the points system in Trap Quest when you start the game, at least, that's how I see it. 

This is getting pretty long now so I'll keep it brief. I'm planning on other characters to be able to take refuge in the sorcerer's sanctum which will be acting as the hub world I was talking about. They'll show up from a slew of situations I'm sure. I think that's about it for now. So with that I'll leave you the prototype image and a happy farewell.

Links to stuff:

The Lagom LCD monitor test pages

http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/

Things to remember

If you're getting burnt out, try a different perspective

Learning is its own reward

tutorials suck, man!