Day 30 ~ 40 (oh how the time flies)

TLDR: There are 3 new attack types separated by single-button input variations. Right now, the new attack types have no difference mechanically, but soon they will imply fundamental difference and be unique. A power attack will have different damage, delay, area of effect, etc. Hopefully this will be a fun mechanic!! (New Hotkeys: Single-Click: Standard Attack, Double-Click: Quick Attack, Click-And-Hold: Power Attack)

So! It's been a sec since I've posted an update, and I need to work on the whole "post an update even if I'm not updating the game" philosophy. Either way, I've still been workin' on the game over at twitch.tv/setolyx, still making progress, just have been working on changes that have resulted in the game being relatively unstable. As a result, I've been waiting to get things stabilized and playable again.

Either way, I'm very close to having things entirely stabilized, so I've gone ahead and made a new build and pushed things so y'all (if interested) can test it. Either way I'll summarize what I've been workin' on, and leave my changelog after as per usual.

So in general I've been working on some general smoothing and tuning of already existing systems. I sort of had a moment where I was playing some other games during my off-time, and I abruptly realized that I was bored with the combat mechanics. In that same moment, I realized that the very same mechanics I was bored with were the same ones I was designing in my own game. Now I'm no expert in mechanics design, and I have no idea if my idea is any better than others previously introduced, but I'm putting my best effort in to create a very basic outline of a system that will allow for much more dynamic combo-creation via introduction of three basic attack types with a simple rule structure. 

I'm still working on the rule structure part, but the basics I have implemented so far allow for the player to seamlessly string together attacks of three types: quick, standard, and heavy/power attacks. It breaks the standard of the one-two-THREE! attack pattern that plagues a LOT of games nowadays, and gives the player the opportunity to do something a bit more free-form and less structured. There will be some sort of basic rules like which attack can follow which in what scenarios, but I'm still working out exactly how that will feel best. I may even scrap the rule structure and just add stamina cost to attacks so there would be a soft limit to things.

Overall I just want to create the structure of a simple system that will allow the player to use weapon-dependent attack types in combination with system-wide attack types to build complex attack combos. A player can theoretically swap weapons mid-combo to construct all sorts of sophisticated attacks. For now things are simple, but once I'm confident in the structure of things I can start elaborating and creating something (hopefully) entertaining and dynamic.

So yeah! I have a bunch of disjointed notes from the past couple weeks that I'll slap down as my changelog, and overall that's what I've been up to! As always, I appreciate every single view of my devlogs, my game, my stream, anything I'm working on. Thank you so much for even a second of your time, and I'm always open for comments and criticism, so please do check out the game, my stream, or both. And if neither, thank you for even reading that sentence and I hope to earn more of your attention some time! 

It's important to note you can get a way better idea of what I'm up to dev-wise by tuning in on my stream, and for now (during this less precise period of dev logging) I hope you can understand my lack of diligent and precise note-taking. All good things come with time, I sure as hell hope. 🙏

Changelog:

• Modified sliders to have input fields for their numbers which can be assigned directly and cleanly updates the slider value 
• started work on creating a world-space indicator for interactable objects 
• fixed issue with duplicate entries in the found interactables list 
• continued work on the world-space indicator for interactables (it now moves to the object's position, and triggers its scaling routines, etc.)
• fully fleshed out movement of world space indicator 
• made sure indicator rotates correctly around certain objects 
• fixed small issue with indicator on doors not flipping to proper position 
• started into creating new input reading & timeline system for combat combos
• fully completed generation of combat block scriptables from weapons 
• got a working version of an input action timeline going 
• converted the current attack input to work with this new system (though it has issues with trigger-releasing double-firing an action)
• moved some of the logic for stopping the player's inputs from triggering attacks to the new combat timeline 
• continued implementing other features into the timeline such as block/parry/dodge-included blocking and dodging in combat timeline inputs 
• also included parrying in timeline 
• also included spellcasting in timeline inputs 
• fixed some issues with not being able to interrupt blocks with dodges 
• made sure spellcasting can now be interrupted via attacking, dodging, blocking, etc. 
• started laying groundwork for specific action sequences in the timeline system
• fixed some edge cases regarding getting stuck in block mode & not successfully re-entering block mode after specific inputs
• fixed some input lockouts regarding dodging and parrying