Mar 17, 2024

Today's update is pretty small, but some nice modern quality of life features added.  So now that random encounters are a thing, I figured I should probably add a start menu.  I don't want a lot of options because at this stage, I really want to focus on the core fundamentals of the game and start working on those; however, most RPGs have a menu system.  For now, the stats and inventory submenus are blank; however, I did add two nice modern QoL features to the menu.

I added the ability to turn encounters on and off from the menu.  This was actually pretty easy to implement.  If you read my devlog from yesterday, I mentioned how I essentially updated two variables with with press of the dpad and when those hit a certain value, it triggered the encounter.  To disable encounters, I basically added a 3rd variable to the check.  When encounters are disabled, this variable == 1, otherwise, this variable is 0.  Choosing this from the menu changes the state of the variable.  The first time I tested it, it worked, but I realized that when changing the state back to encounters enabled, I would want to reset the encounter variables.  Sure, someone could do this to cheese the system, but if you have the ability to turn them on and off at will, it doesn't matter.  But the first time i turned it back on, i had taken too many steps so I instantly got in to a battle.

The 2nd QoL feature I implemented in the menu is a quicksave.  Now, in a perfect world, I'd have deleted this save upon load, but since I only have 3 save files to work with, I decided to basically let this be a reloadable save from within the field.  So the player will not necessarily be at full strength when loading this save.  This is basically how pokemon (and others) have always done this.  If I can figure out a way to have more than 3 save slots (don't think I can), then my plan would be save the quick save to slot 4, 5, and 6 and basically link the quick save to the slot number.  When loading the quick save, it'd point the save file number back to the original save and delete the quick save slot.  But I haven't thought this through and doubt that's feasible anyhow, so the way I have it working is probably how I will leave it.

Work is going to be absolutely brutal for the next 6 weeks or so, so I don't know how much time I'll actually get to do anything further on this.  Hopefully I can still sneak in a few hours a week.