April 12, 2024

Minor update today again.  So I did some thinking about the future of the project.  I'm not sure that I want to invest time in an item system.  Maybe once I get a game under my belt I can make a 2nd game with one.  I also feel like the main character being a dog doesn't lend itself well to having /using items other than, say, a stick or ball which limits options for me.  Instead, right now I'm thinking of having "key items" in the menu.  This would be things like a leash to fast travel items you find to progress in the story (or enable special moves).  

That said, making that decision has now driven me to update my battle menu a smidge.  So I sought feedback from the great pyrenees subreddit on typical pyr traits I might be missing.  I got a lot of good feedback.  The big one is that I used 'bork' as both a move and a stat.  I really wanted to fit in the famed 'pyr paw' somewhere, so I updated the 'bork' battle command to be Pyr Paw and have left the bork stat essentially as your standard strength stat.

The other small update was changing the 'treats'/item command in the battle menu to reflect 'guard' along with corresponding text during battle.  Right now, I have this set up to reduce damage by 90%. I also will have it add one to the "turnOrder" variable so you can either reduce or eliminate turn penalties in battle when using commands.  One of my favorite RPGs is 7th Saga so I'm also considering having guarding increasing your bork stat so attacks hurt more.  I have to think on how to implement that.  I dont' think it's hard per se, but will require some logic and additional trigger variables.  We'll see if I decide to do that.  

Finally, I think I've decided that since I added in guarding, I really should add in some enemy moves other than basic attacks.  I'm thinking about implementing that as well.  For now, I basically think the move pool for enemies will need to be defined similarly to encountering them and defining their stats.  So right now I have variables for enemyNumber and enemyType.  Think of pokemon for a second.  I basically have enemyNumber as the evolutionary line and enemyType as the evolution number.  So if you're talking Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow, you'd have:

 enemyNumber == 1 && enemyType==1 --> Bulbasaur

 enemyNumber == 1 && enemyType==2 --> Ivysaur

 enemyNumber == 1 && enemyType==3 --> Venusaur

I'm essentially thinking I add a 3rd variable to this called enemyMoveSet or something similar.  I think I can set up separate scripts for each moveset so when I calculate damage, I basically have a bunch of if statements saying "if (enemyNumber == 1 && enemyType==1) || (enemyNumber==69[ie bellsprout] && enemyType==1) call script basicGrassMoves

and then basicGrassMoves would contain code that is basically generating a random number between 1 and n where n is the max number of possible moves.  Then use whatever move you define in that script for that move pool number.  

I saida lot there and I don't have anything to show for that, but that's sort of what I'm thinking for some upcoming work over the next month or so.  I just need to get through the next 2 weeks of work before I can focus a bit more on those items.  I put more thought and high level context in this post than anticipated, but now that I'm thinking, I'm glad that I did so I know what to do when I have time!