More progress today! The
healing and
spell damage animations are in!
All items and weapons have been added, though I can't reach the upper levels to make sure the final spells spawn, I keep dying on level 6.
The only thing left to be content complete is the
Victory Screen upon defeating the final boss and making sure that the last level is a custom dungeon, instead of the normal ones generated. I want to make it big, square-ish area, to fight in.
I also implemented a much simpler and apparently faster sorting algorithm for drawing the sprites back-to-front depending on your orientation which seems to also have fix some sprite overlapping issues I was having.
Only bug left that I know about is that sometimes when changing your view direction the sprite directly in front of you does not get rendered. If you rotate again and then go back it appears. My guess is that there's a floating point calculation that displays that sprite just a tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny bit further away than it is. Adding a +0.1 to the distance calculations solved this issue.
So outside of working on the Victory Screen the only thing left to finish is balancing and tweaking some of the spell effects. There aren't many spells in the game due to limitations (funds for animations and the way I programmed my TURN handling function). I'll be spending the next week or so tweaking and balancing the game.
Here's the new healing animation in my quick priest run attempt. I ended up dying because I ran out of mana by the last attack and couldn't heal myself. Ogh well.
After that? On October 7 -> 9 the game will be showcased at an Indie Arts and Game festival in Cluj, Romania. Taking my SE/30 there where I'll be having my own booth and I'll be showcasing the beauty that is a 68K compact mac to the many people of the convention.
Now the publisher is having a few issues with logistics and if the game is ready before they can handle manufacturing and publishing I'll just use the extra time to work on some sound effects and tracks for the game. I've been playing AudioCD's on my SE/30's AppleCD 300e while playing and working on the game and I'm really thinking that some sound effects should spice things up a bit. Depending on how things go, I might just employ a good friend of mine, and musician, to make a sound track AudioCD for the game for some extra fun but it might just be overdoing it (depending on how costly it ends up being).
I'll keep you guys updated on when the game is complete and what the plans are from the publisher's side. I really want to get the game out by November 2nd, the fifth anniversary of the original game.