Mar 24, 2024

So yesterday (3/24) I spent some time implementing a move called Cat Breath (RIP to in inspiration Lucy up the street) that will work like a normal attack, but has a significantly increased chance at a critical hit; however, it will also delay your next turn.  I also worked a bit on trying to implement turn order.  When I say turn order, I don't mean based on the graceful stat (ie agility).  The way I'm going to implement skills (and items if I decide to have items) is to have skills essentially make you lose a turn (or more than one turn).  It almost certainly would be easier to do a straight magic point system, but I figured this would be a nice spin on things and if I can nail the battle system and damage calculations, this could add a bit of strategy to the encounters.  Right now, I think it's working with the 2 skills I have (dusty's chirp -- healing -- and cat breath), but I haven't tested extensively because the damage calculations and/or stats for both player and enemy are just way off.  Best I can tell by testing my 'great porkachew' encounters, it seems like this works.  I'll leave it for now and go back to this at a later date.  

To determine the roll for critical hits, I normally have two damage multipliers that are a random value between 1 and 4.  If both fields roll a 4, you score a critical that is double the typical damage.  For cat breath, you essentially have a 50% chance at a crit.  I roll the first multiplier to a random value of 1 or 2.  So I'm only looking for a 2 to get a crit.  Big difference in frequency, but is it worth the risk on stronger enemies (ie bosses)!?  

To implement losing/delaying your turn, I created variables for both the player and the enemy called turnOrder.  Since battles are menu driven, I leverage the menu selection to drive most of the logic in my flows.  I have multiple scripts throughout the battle flow.  It's hands down the most complex system I have and probably will remain the most complex.  Generally speaking, the flow goes like this:

Whew!  That was so much text!  I didn't plan on giving this long and detailed of an update!  I just started typing and one thought led tot he next.  It's nice to see the flow laid out though.  I should create a workflow diagram at some point.  

My code has gotten really messy.  I tried creating a script, but no matter where I put it, it felt like it was never functioning correctly.  So I ended up building nested if statements in to the battle flow.  It sucks and will make maintaining things moving forward a nightmare.  I probably should focus on refactoring the entire codebase while it's small.  Perhaps I will at some point over the coming weeks.  I'm far from a professional developer and in fact my day job is 'product owner', so i'm even at a loss for how to best parse this all out in to scripts.  But code cleanliness isn't exactly a good or flashy update, so I'll leave it at that.  It is on my list of 'some day maybe' items.