Learn You a Game Jam - Day 13 Home Stretch

Almost there!  So much MUST DOs left to Must Do.  I got a lot of work done yesterday - Autoscroller is working, side borders prevent the player from going past the scroll, but not the other Characters.  Implemented a Drop/Loot system that seems to be mostly working, but itemed Guildies that had picked up a dropped item from another Guildie will periodically not do anything but Rally - not Heal or Attack.

I need to make an Abandon  line with the autoscroller so that Items and Guildies that cross it are released.  I get some slowdown and bad MainTank behavior when the screen gets crowed. I tried 2DBox and it crashed the game and made things worse when it worked.  I think I have an idea to reduce collisions before they happen, particular with guildies.  But it could also YEET them across the screen when they try to touch, so we will see.  I'd like not to have to put in a cap, at least not a low one, but I will if I can't get it to run without glitches.

On that note, I improved the Hopper so that it doesn't have an actual array for each ticket - it has one for each ticket type and a third TALLY on the ticket that tells you how many are in the hopper.  Picking the result isn't as easy as it was.  Now it picks a random lucky number up to the number of tickets you have, the cycles through each "tally" ticket, adding to a temporary count by that amount and checking if the count amount now is greater than the lucky number.  If it is, CONGRADULATIONS - the first two elements of the array are now your winning TICKET are are ready to be passed to the Call TICKET command.

Did not help performance, but it made me feel better.  Also took the opportunity to install a FORCE ACTION queue, where anyone can just FORCE the next ticket call and then remove itself from the FORCE ACTION queue.  This is hopefully where I can FINALLY manage my Rally and Taunt commands (basically, HEY GET OVER HERE! one for Friends one for Foes.  Push one button and Friends will Rally no matter what.  Push another and enemies (within a range) will attack you no matter what.

Let see if THIS will do it.

Also added Cooldowns to the Heal and Attack actions.

Sound and Music and Map updates need to happen TONIGHT.  As does the Boss and the appropriate triggers for the DIRECTOR to move through the level.  I need to put in my UI Menus (CRITICAL), and UI Display Options (less critical, but still want)

Mosnter Generator just off screen to the right.  Should be same as Doors but with tweeks

Then basic Tuning of stats - Stamina / Strength / Health / Heal / Attack Amounts / Cooldowns - all need to be adjusted to work reasonably well together.  Right now its just thrown together with what seemed like good stats, but I need to review.

That should be the MUST DOs that I MUST DO TONIGHT. 

Hopping back on at Mindnight... I got most of this done.  I shortened the map, cutting the mounain/caves but getting to the Town faster.  Added a lot of sound and Music, plus the director/Act/Even structure to control the flow of the game.  Basically I have event markers down that are looking for game states and will set flags that turn on things like the monster generators, or plays or turns off music, or starts scrolling.  It is like a script, after the event happens, it sets what it needs to and frees itself so it won't accidentally go off.

Picked up the Broadsword? ok, start scrolling the camera, turn off the morning sounds, play the adventure music and fire up the monster generators.

Got those up too.  Scary moment when ALL my Characters were slimes.  Slimes were pouring out of my house!  BTW I question the wisdom of both debugging and testing an AUTOSCROLLER and one that you can't even start until the game decides to pick up a sword...

I'm going to try to get as much done on the slime boss as I can.  I have to flesh out the rest of the sound effects and music, set up the rest of the game events, set up as BASIC a ui as I can with a good and bad endstate (Good - kill boss, bad you let the Sword get abandoned off screen)

Oh, yeah -  DROPS and LOOT are working, and a side effect that I wasn't intending but LOVE is that the MainTank dies - he drops his sword and another Guildie can pick it up and the GAME CONTINUES.  You only die if the sword goes too far off the screen.  There is an abandon line just off the left of the screen that frees all Characters and items that cross it.  If you Sword crosses it, instead of freeing it, it will trigger the FAIL STATE!

Well, I got to get to my Boss.  One more DAY!