Life of an Adventurer Test Version Update

Welcome once again to my devlog for "Life of an Adventurer"!

This is probably the last devlog for this game because I have finished implementing all of the needed features of the game. After this would be a lot of testing from me to try and balance out the difficulty of the game as much as possible. This devlog will cover the last features that I have just completed.

First one is the newly improved look of the battle system. I have changed the color of the damage indicator if the damage is a crit. I also made it a bit larger than the other damage to fully indicate which one is a critical damage. Here is the new look of the battle system:

In addition to the newly improved look of the game, I have also implemented the item system which consists of a health potion and a mana potion. These items can be bought in the shop when the player is in the town after each quests. Here is the look on how the potions work:

Another thing that is new to the battle system is the controls. I have added hotkeys in the game and it uses QWER for the actions that can be perform by the player and "1" - "2" for the potions. I thought about implementing this because of how many times that I have been testing my own game to see if some bugs will happen or how will they happen. After a lot of testing, I thought that it would be nice if I can easily press some keys in my keyboard for the actions rather than moving my mouse back and forth from the action panel to the enemies to choose a target. After this implementation, all of the testing has become quicker and easier so sometimes finding some ways to look for some improvements in the game can also be find while in the testing phase.

I have also added some new quests in the game that consists of 2 hard quests in which 1 quest has 1 strong enemy which indicates the strongest enemy in the game currently. I would not spoil anything about these 2 quests but expect the worst enemies that you can find in the game.

Conclusion

Since this is probably my last devlog, I would like to share some of my learnings and challenges when it comes to the development of this game as the conclusion of all of my devlog. If you have read all of my devlog from the start, you would notice that I have made multiple changes in my plans. This is because I didn't start this project with a game design planned. Usually, people uses a GDD or a "Game Design Document" to help them properly set the direction of the project. However, the reason I didn't made a GDD because I think that It is only useful when it comes to a project with a team.

My biggest challenge when developing this game is definitely the implementing the turn-based system for the battle system. It took me quite a lot of trial and error until I finally succeeded in implementing the turn-based system. At first, it was a very simple system where the player will always start the turn since it was easy to implement. Then I proceeded to the other features of the game like the shop system and the quest system before improving the turn-based so that the enemy can start first before the player if it has the higher speed stat. 

The biggest thing that I learned that really helps me sped up the development of the game is the "Observer Pattern". It uses the event system that listens to triggers and when it gets activated, a certain event will run all of the things that is subscribed to an event. If it confuses you, think like a door that needs to be opened when a player is in front of it. The trigger will be when a player is in front of it and the event will be called "Open Door Event" and then the door will subscribe to that event. If it is still confusing, it is okay since at the start it was confusing also for me but then I did not stop trying to learn it just because it was confusing so try to practice using it then you will one day understand how it works. Here is a sneak peek on how I did the observer pattern:

Lastly, this is probably the hardest game that I ever tried to make because this is the first time that I have ever made an rpg strategy game while also thinking about on how to implement a certain theme. I may have completed this game but I may have forced some things just for the purpose of " as long as it works " in which I would like to call it as "Failed Learning Experience". But a failure will not always become a failure when you experience it in the hard way and then learn from it to avoid it become a failure again. This is one of the most helpful mindset that I have when it comes to developing games and I hope you can learn to have this kind of mindset. 

I hope you learned a lot in my devlog and I appreciate that you read every devlog that I posted for this game because this is my very first devlog. I also hope that you enjoy the finished version when you played it. All feedbacks and suggestions are open for me even if it is a harsh feedback I do not mind if its gonna help in the future games that I will make. This is the end of this devlog. Thank you for reading!