As I mentioned last time, the next build is supposed to be about fireball, it appeared, updates with perks and extra features like an explosion on impact, embers, and ignition.
Fireball.
The first part of the week I spent trying to make existing fireball look nicer, using particle system and explosion effect on impact. After watching several tutorials on youtube, I ended up with the following fireball.
I think it looks nice for the first particle system I’ve ever created. The problem raised when enemies started to use it as well. Once there were 30 fireballs flying around, the game began to lag. So I had to create a new spell specifically for enemies, which is just a flying ball (almost like it was before).
And the rest of the week I worked on updating fireball logic, how it delivers a damage, with and without explosion effect. For instance, when the spell does not have an explosion update, it will damage only an enemy it just hit. Once an explosion is active (let’s say a perk was chosen with Explosion on it), the fireball gives a damage to every enemy in a specific radius.
Perk System Update
The one thing I had to change my Perk system is an ability to have several values per a tier. What I mean is, a spell costs mana to be created, and once we increase the damage of the spell, we have to increase mana as well. Next, what if the spell does not have a specific damage value and instead it is a range, from minimum to maximum. It will definitely be with lightning, cause it usually delivers points of damage in a range from 1 to some value. And third, what if I don’t want to type every damage/mana cost in every spell, but instead have a formula do it for me. With that, I redesign the Level up System, and there is now a flag, a boolean variable, which defines how this perk should be created. Does it take values from xml file, does it accept formula, or does the information about the next level of a perk is located in spell prefab already? The latter I added, cause I figured it would be easy for some of the values to be changed this way, specifically for the additional features of a spell, like an explosion of the fireball.
Time log
Finally, about my productivity. I logged 16 hours last week, however, I also spent some time on my work with learning some stuff from the Internet, for instance, I thought it is gonna be good for me to know how to draw at least the basic staff. So now, when I have some free time, I am doing lessons I found on Reddit. Maybe someday I will be even satisfied with the staff and will post it 🙂