Welcome to the fourth historic change log breakdown. We had a lot of fun developing the combat state of Shoppe Keep. With it, combat led to some interesting design decisions. You can read the full Article at http://www.indiedb.com/games/shop-keep
So the two change logs that we are referencing this week are:
ChangeLog 05.24
- Combat state let's you damage objects, kill customers
- Skeletons now have to be removed with a broom or face an impact on shop appeal
- Trash piles spawn when an object is destroyed, remove with broom
- Customers bleed when hit, if killed ragdolls and you have to use the broom
- Object hit FX
- Blood FX
- Barbarians attack the player
- Shooting a spell drains mana, wait to recharge it
- Player health recharges
- Dead barbarians/Customers eyes change
- Once a barbarian has spawned every customer, thief, havoc, innocent will just run out of the shop for their lives, kill barbarians to restore order.
- To spawn barbarians press O (For debugging purposes for now)
- Once a barbarian is damaged by the player (Sword damage works for now) all of them will gang up on the player
- Knockout animation and state done
- Barbarians want to destroy every display object in the store, after none are left, they will leave
- Havoc customer now can become any class, he will have a 1 in 25 chance to make a spawned customer want to knock off items
- Bots should now behave properly even with the dirt on the ground
- Barbarians drop their sword, you can not buy it, but you can sell it
ChangeLog 05.29
- Objects will "flinch" when hit by a repair hammer or damaged
- Rats spawn in junk piles and will dirty the floor
- New Central UI Button:Statistics
- Statistics panel shows appeal and the causes that lower it including:
Body,Skeleton, Junk pile count and a progress bar of how dirty is the floor
- Specularity in objects as a test
- Animated menu buttons
- Shop size choice (The system is here, will be used when more shops come)
- Reworked the start of free mode
- Moved the "Press E to open shop" in a more appropriate place
- Barbarians spawn each time 100 customers spawn
- We have another lose condition - Shop Appeal
- 4 Time phases in free mode (Build,Morning,Day,Evening)
- Skip time phases with M(Debug reasons the cost is 0 gold, so skip away)
- Debug reasons Build mode has 0 SPM, Morning 50 SPM,Day 38 SPM, Evening 12 SPM
- A watch...Yeh, state 5 (Press 5 to check your watch)
Here was the very first screenshot taken of the combat state. Letting players wield a sword and a lightning spell:
Originally, skeletons would dissolve when the player zapped enemies. However, we found that perhaps skeletons should affect shop appeal, so players would need to remove them otherwise the shoppe would have a decrease in appeal, resulting in a loss in customer footfall.
You probably don't want your shoppe looking like this:
This change log introduced the barbarians! Spawning in packs, they would sought to destroy your shoppe, resulting in damaged store shelves. If left to their dastardly deeds, your shoppe will be at their mercy. However if the player chooses to defend their shoppe, they will attack the player and attempt to knock them out. The player will fall and the barbarians will then continue thier rampage on store objects
This build also included a tiny bit of polishing to give the player better feedback that their shop was being repaired. This just meant adding a slight flinch when repairing a shoppe object
Once an object is destroyed, it will become a pile of trash. This will then attract rats to your shoppe so it is wise to sweep the floor and get the shop clean again... Even though these fellas are adorable, your customers will not feel the same way
We also started work on creating a day cycle for free mode. The result of this was that certain parts of the day will have a higher footfall, but also meant that the evening/morning phases could be used to place tables and shelves in your shoppe.
That's the end of for these change logs! We have a lot more interesting things to share, so stay tuned!