Combat is Ready! (E.E.P)

So… its been a while since my last post on this game, but I finally have the combat at a stage I’m happy with! As much of a headache as it was I learned a lot and feel as though I’ve made great strides to improving my knowledge and skill in programming.

The combat now progresses through a state machine that tracks who’s turn it is and holds their chosen action and target, once the player has chosen for all three of his party members the enemies will then choose a random action with a random target. A problem quickly arose when i realized the enemies and players would beat the crap out of the fallen opposition doing essentially zero damage if their target gets defeated before their turn to attack it comes round.

To counter this I decided to have the game check each targets state before trying to damage them, and change targets if the one they have chosen has already been defeated (the headache this caused was immeasurable but we ended up figuring it out) this now happens for both enemies and players to keep things even.

So, a quick refresher for those that don’t know how our combat works:
-At the start of a round the player assigns each party member an action and a target.
-The actions are either SWORD, SHIELD or MAGIC.
– Combat then begins, the order of actions are as follows:
-Ally SHIELDS get applied, Enemy SHIELDS get applied
-Ally SWORD attacks, Enemy SWORD attacks
-Ally MAGIC attacks, Enemy SWORD attacks
-There are a few interactions that can occur during this time:
-If a SWORD attack hits a target that is about to use a MAGIC attack, the MAGIC attack is interrupted.
-If a SWORD attack hits a target that is SHIELDED and the users ATTACK stat is lower than the BLOCK stat of the person that shielded the target, the SWORD user will be STUNNED for the next turn and can not act.
-If a MAGIC attack hits a target that is being SHIELDED, the attack bypasses the defense of the target and deals normal damage. (Magic attacks can not be blocked)

As you can see I have a very unappealing UI set up until I get the art and 3D models from my artists but it functions mostly how the end product will (bar the animations, particle effects, damage numbers ect.)
Hopefully by the end of next week the game will be in a state where we have all the art and animations in along with some sound! I’m not sure whether we will be able to have everything else we wanted such as the event system ect. But at the very least the hardest work is done and we will get as much of the rest working as we can over the next few weeks, so watch this space for a build when its ready!!