Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Armor panel

I've just fixed a bug that was keeping your armor from being damaged during fights. The problem is that the only way to see your armor status is to open your inventory to check its durability. So I finally added a small panel that appears as soon as you wear at least one piece of armor. It shows you what part of the armor you are wearing and the current durability of each part. Like the weapons skills, there is an exclamation mark if it is damaged (durability < 0.66 base durability) and two exclamation marks if it is badly damaged (durability < 0.25 base durability). If an armor part is about to break (durability=1), its background color is flashing.

I also started working on the game balance. Despite hours of play, I never reached the XP level 3... In order to be able to increase difficulty more gradually, I had to multiply weapons damages, armor bonus and health points by a factor of 5. Of course, to multiply everything by 5 would be too easy (and wouldn't change anything), so I played with every parameter while doing it and now it is completely unbalanced...

Another big task is the streamlining of the skill system. When I first wrote it, I added Guild Wars skills without having a clue of what I was doing, choosing skills that sounded cool. The result is that there are some really complex skills available as soon as you reach XP level 1. I have to work on it so that the player can discover the skill system gradually, bringing concepts one after another. As a source of inspiration, I have the complete Guild Wars and World Of Warcraft Fighter/Warrior skill reference...