Garden of Elements 0.3 August - September Dev Notes (2024)

Hello everyone, it's been a while since the last monthly post, don't worry, I haven't disappeared, my job has only allowed me to make some adjustments to the game, during the month of July the development activity was low, but during that month I have been updating all the AI of the game to adapt it to have pathfinding, that means that now the enemies will be able to come after you through the world and the caves avoiding obstacles, in addition to updating many functions of the code of the enemies, weapons and effects, you I will explain everything now.

Additionally, I also think that the best way to give monthly updates is at the end of each month, so the titles of these updates now make sense.

This post will be mostly technical, since all the changes are mainly in the game code, updating and optimizing many functions, although this is almost imperceptible in terms of the current game, internally a lot has changed in order to facilitate writing the code 

Let's start at the beginning

Pathfinding

Now the enemies have pathfinding intelligence, this is something super important that I wanted to implement in the game because having added the caves in version 0.2 the enemies did not appear in them, which made the caves a super safe place, in addition to Enemies on the surface were easy to outwit because they went in a straight line, my temporary solution during those versions was to make their motion collider circular so they could slip a little and still come towards you, but those things are in the past

This took a lot longer than I thought it would, because it wasn't just about setting up the system for the enemies, but for the animals as well, starting with the fact that they have to interact with every obstacle in the game, this includes the caves that have indestructible walls and also objects like the water on the surface.

On top of that, there are also flying enemies, which leads to these enemies being able to jump over certain obstacles, like water for example.

In addition to this, there were also routines, many enemies have combat behaviors, depending on what an enemy is like they can panic when you hit them, be passive and then go after you when they are attacked, or always attack you when they see you, for all enemies there are certain routines that they do as long as they don't target you, this whole conversion was more complicated than I thought but the result is more than satisfactory, there is still work to do with this system, but so far the enemies going after you in the caves has made this worth it

Also this is one of the many things I had to complete before adding new enemies

(Image of a cave seen in the editor - The green lines are the paths of some zombies heading towards the player)

Debuff

The debuffs are something that has existed since 0.1 but they worked in a totally different way from the current one. Before each debuff was generated as an object that was placed on the enemy, this worked at the time to add things like the bleeding that the debuffs apply to you. worms or the shield that you get “Plant Shield”, at the time it was a good implementation but everything changed with this new version that is mainly focused on combat, so I not only realized that system was wrong, but that I improved it It was quite difficult

Now both the player and the enemies have a part of the code for their functions focused on buffs and debuffs, the best thing about this new system is that it is much more flexible, since it allows me to add a lot of functions without having to rewrite code Additionally, it optimizes performance a little more by not having to generate 300 new objects if you apply those effects to so many enemies

Also, weapons, projectiles and abilities share this same system, so it is compatible with everything, it is all unified so you can expect to have weapons that apply different advantages or disadvantages with attacks, Like that fire staff you have seen 

Damage System

This is another feature that had a significantly bigger change, you will see the in-game damage is recorded through the enemies' script, since they are the ones who receive and deal the hits, everything is calculated by their core script, but there was too much redundancy, and since there are so many ways to take or deal damage, I had to solve all this and simplify it while making it much more flexible, damage is now recorded in a single call, which in turn has many receipts to allow that works with all combat functionalities.

One of those things are things like pushback, effects like buffs or debuffs, precision calculations, or recovery times.

In addition to that, as I said before the debuff system is combined with this system, and in fact thanks to that you can do quite fun effects like making a bleed push the enemies or you.

The game's math isn't too complex so far, but it needs to be well structured to work as I'd like, there are still two important things to add, critical damage and evasion, although I'm studying the latter a bit because with the precision stat, evasion can be a bit problematic in terms of combat.

Interface

Oh the interface, it has always been my biggest headache, over time I have changed the interface so much that it would surprise you, but since the release of 0.1 and as I add new features I always focus on improving as much as possible. I can to represent all the information to the player, given that there are so many things in the game, it is necessary to have the player well informed about everything there is, although there are still improvements to be made, I can say that I feel better and better with the result it is having currently, but hey, what new things are there? Well, that's what you'll see now.

Clock

Well, this is a top down game and there is a day and night cycle, the change in lighting can give you an idea of what time of day you are in, but since you can't see the sky, it's not very clear either, now you have a clock on the interface that will give you a clear idea of it, almost as if you could see the sky

Equipment Information and Statistics

Well, it used to happen in internal play tests with friends that sometimes it was not clear what each icon of the spaces to equip objects represented, I had done 2 things so that you had an idea, the first thing was to put each equippable object next to it in parentheses that type of equippable item is, and then make it so that when you moved an item through the inventory, block the equippable boxes with a noticeable red color that does not match the type of equipment so that you know where it goes, but well sometimes a little more Information doesn't do anything bad, and even more so when there are objects that are obtained much later in the game and you have no idea what they are.

In addition to that, the button below the character that shows you all the statistics was repowered with much more information about you and all those fabulous statistics that you want to upload so much, separated into 3 windows that range from basic, offensive and defensive statistics, and as surely Not everyone has an idea what each icon means, also when you hover your mouse over it it will tell you what it means

Arrows also have statistics

The subtitle says it all

Equipped Weapons

Well, before the combat mode exchanged your toolbar for the skills you had equipped to fight, but there were two problems, it did not show you the weapon you had equipped, and if you had a bow it did not tell you the arrows either and since 0.2 with the introduction Regarding durability, it was vital to know how damaged your weapon was, well that is behind you now when you enter combat mode you will not only see your skills, but you will also see your weapon and ammunition, this includes its durability, so you will have everything under control 

More informative elemental skills

Same thing, now the skills also tell you everything you need to know, from the damage you will do, the elemental energy they consume and their cooldown with these icons, this works like a charm and is the most recent thing I have programmed so far, because for To make this possible I had to do a lot of coding in the way the texts are constructed in the game, since the game supports multiple languages, having all the important information on screen without conflicts between translations was really important, so I freed up a lot of the numbers in the texts and the code now takes them directly from the skills, this way if I want to change the statistics of something, I don't have to worry about the translation, you will see the important information anyway

Well the development does not stop and things continue to improve, internally I have been working a lot on the game code to be able to add a lot of functionalities to make the combat much more interesting and easier to program, also as you could see a glimpse of the new ones ground type abilities, you will surely see more in a future publication, all this work has given way to being able to add new and varied enemies around the world with their peculiarities to make it amazing, and since many systems work wonderfully, it is just a matter of While I add content like new items, weapons, enemies and more to make a great adventure, there are more things I have planned for this version, but now is not the time to tell them, you will discover it in the future, and you will surely love it

See you next time with new news about the game.