Development Log: January Engine - Week 5

I figured out the weird keyboard error in regards to flash games and WASD controls not working.  Turns out it's Comcast's Constant Guard that messes up keyboards, changes screen resolution, crashes Google Chrome, and a host of other problems.  Now that that's uninstalled, I quickly added WASD controls back.  (You can still use the arrow keys if you prefer, as well.) 

I had thought initially that the problem was a Flash or Chrome thing, but it was magically something that you would think would be completely unrelated.  If you have Constant Guard, uninstall it immediately.  The Norton product that comes with it will still be installed and working on your computer.

Beyond that, I spent the majority of the week working on the inventory system.  I knew I wanted the player to be able to look at their cards, open new booster packs they find, hold onto cards not in their deck, and swap out cards in their deck.  The player can't swap out cards, but the rest is functional.

As I created the inventory, however, I also came up with an idea to allow the player to change the rules.  The player will find rule sets that change some conditions, such as max health, max/min cards in deck, and may also limit what cards the player may use in their deck (I'll have to revamp the card system to allow another variable or twelve that limits which cards are allowed with which rules).

At present, there is only one rule set, so it's mostly just for display at the moment.

There is also functionality for unique quest items, although I have none to test yet.

One bug is that when you pick up a new booster, the inventory menu hasn't refreshed to show that you picked one up, so you need to check your deck to clear the top level inventory menu, then click OK, then the "New Booster" option will appear.  Currently, if I fix that bug, then a new bug pops up:  if you leave the inventory while checking your deck and then enter back in, you will see the cards you were looking at, plus the top level inventory menu overlapping.  I figure the refresh bug is a nicer bug to deal with.

Also, I am sure that you can get the booster from the first NPC an infinite number of times.  That'll be fixed next week.

I find that I spend a lot of time rearranging the code as I discover it's necessary to do so to implement a feature.  Oftentimes, before I can even implement the feature, I reorder the code, then spend an hour fixing bugs that have appeared as a result of that.  This is definitely due to the fact that I'm coding on the fly rather than preplanning or engineering it beforehand.  It's a lesson for the taking.

But I'm enjoying it; I'm learning how to hack things to fit my desires, even though I'm certainly not programming as the language was designed.  I think it's because I never got a strong education in object oriented programming; most of my programming skills come from learning Pascal in high school, and I can't say I was "taught" any OOP in college, so only traces of the structure and vocabulary stuck.  I understand the theory behind inheritance, for instance, but the implementation kills me, so I avoid the headaches that come with it.

I've heard of structures called Singletons, though I never learned them (they aren't in AS3 anyway), so instead of creating one for the inventory, I just made static variables, while the overworld and battle systems act as singletons in function, if not in name.

I also want to design the engine so that the user who wants to make worlds/levels can edit one file without touching the rest of the code, so the maps, npcs, enemies, card types, and more are all in one fairly clean file of variables that can be edited without too much trouble.  I bet this is terrible practice, so I may split them up soon, but hopefully it will remain as user-friendly as I can possibly make it.

PLAY WEEK 5 HERE.

Or read on to the next log, where things get mighty different after a hiatus...