Okay, this post is actually posted on my blog last monday (it's here ) but since I also intend to make indieDB blog post as promotional tool, I thought to translate it (as best I can) to English. So, let's start.
The last week I finally finished making the barrack mode of my game, this took longer than I thought because it turns out the barrack mode is more complex than I thought. What is barrack mode? Barrack mode is some kind of a "neutral zone" when our heroes aren't on an adventure or doing side quests. It's named "barrack mode" because in the rough storyline that I made, this game is about a band of mercenaries hired to fight war against neighbouring kingdom (yes, war. Not something grand like saving the world from being destroyed by an evil demon). Players can do a few things in barrack mode:
- Buys necessary items / equipments, these are sold by merchants in the guild.
- Leveling, to increase player's attributes when they rise up in level
- Choosing a quest, either main quest or side quest. It's presented like a request board in a mercenary barrack
- Arranging inventory, players can later equip weapons and armours and stuffs too, but still not yet implemented.
When making the shopping part of barrack mode, I must first list all available items in the game and which items can be bought on store. Players can buy most healing items and equipments on store, but most items and equipments (especially strong ones) can only be acquired from dungeons in side quests. This is my reward system from trying out side quests in the game. Also, this adds a bit of realism to the game, because I can never understand how come the best equipment in a game be in the hand of a weapon merchant (who's the dreaded weapon supplier?)
Leveling system of the game is pretty simple. Each time a player levels up, he/she will get 3 skill points (or level points, or upgrade points, no definitive name yet) to be used to increase characters' attribute (like HP, ATK, DEF, and so on). Character's skill (and magic) can also increase in level, but in a different way than attributes. Skills will go up a level after being used a number of times, I haven't decided how many uses to go up a level but each skill will have their own minimum number of usage before leveling up. And characters will only get a new skill after a certain skill (or skills) reach a certain level. I haven't decided whether to show a skill tree in this game or not.
Quests are divided into main quest and side quests. Main quest is always at the top part of the screen with side quests below it. I make the interface a bit like quest board (or something). Right now the quest screen already shows some placeholder quests for testing mode, but I still not able to change main quest depending on how far the player is in main story of the game. The quest works though, clicking on it will move the game to a adventure map which players can explore. Another thing that burdens my mind is the number of side quests, two are too few. I want to make side quests part scrollable so that I can provide players with more than two side quests.
Lastly, there's an inventory screen where players can manage stuffs (items and equipments) that they carry. Inventory screen is the part that gave me most headache between any other functionality in barrack mode. I have to make 2 arrays , one for database of all items, one for remembering what items the player has in his/her inventory. The array for item database has three dimensions, the first is the item's name, the second is item's description in detail, and the third is the item's frame index in the animation (all items are the same game object). While the array for remembering player's inventory only have 2 dimensions, the first is the item's name, and the second is how many of those item the player has.
I made a mistake because I haven't familiar with how Construct 2 handles arrays. Usually (in other language I'm used to) I define an empty array and then push all new elements to the new array. It turns out when Construct 2 creates a new array object, it will by default fills the array with a value of 0 for every index. After I know how array behaves in Construct 2, I can fill elements of the array based on its index, and then sort items in inventory screen based on the array.
Even though I did say that I finished barrack mode, I haven't actually perfectly finish it, because there are still things lacking. Shopping screen still unable to actually buy and sell stuffs, leveling screen still not improving characters' attributes, quest screen is still not showing the necessary main quest, inventory screen is still not storing weapons and equipments. But for now I'm quite satisfied with barrack mode, and will proceed with other parts of the game. I only hope that I can address these minor problem as I continue to make alpha build of my game. One more important thing: I haven't decided on the name of the game, guess that's one more thing to think of as I work on my game
