Hello dear people, hello after a 2-month break! A lot has happened in the meantime, both with me and the game.
I moved to another house! So, July was a busy month for me, filled with house-hunting and moving.
As a result, I wasn’t able to make much progress on the game, and I decided not to write a devlog because there wasn’t much to talk about. However, after I moved, August was different. I was able to make progress… soooo here we go.
Combat Log
As the title suggests, thanks to a suggestion from one of our valuable Discord members, I added a combat log where damage is recorded. It logs which limb is hit, how much damage is absorbed, and whether it’s a critical strike or not.
City Economy
I wanted to create an authentic economy in Tales of Elondria. The first step towards that was implementing city resources. Now, each city has different resources based on the tiles around them. For example, if a city is surrounded by the ocean, it will have fish as one of its main resources. If a city is surrounded by a forest, wood will be one of its primary resources. This allowed me to customize the cargo that city caravans carry. So, every caravan carries the main resources of the city they come from.
If you need fish, just ambush the caravan coming out of a coastal city!
Caravans (What… wait… again?!)
I know, I know… Caravans were already part of the game, but they were just moving around aimlessly, not knowing what they were carrying or how to fight.
So, I started by adding a female caravan leader, then I wanted to include them in the game’s ecosystem by implementing an insight check. Just like with animals, when the player hovers their mouse over a caravan, based on the player’s charisma and intelligence, they can learn some information about the caravan.
This information includes:
- Strength comparison
- Name of the leader
- Faction
- Status (rested, tired), buffed, or debuffed
- Cargo (whether it’s general goods, jewelry, food, etc.)
- Destination
After the insight check, I continued with combat.
First, I added a panel that shows up when you click on a caravan. In addition to the animals, I added a ransom option to caravans. The success rate is a combination of strength, intelligence, and charisma.
If the player succeeds, the caravan gives them some money, and everyone is happy. However, if they fail, then a fight begins.
The player also cannot ransom the same caravan twice. No matter what the stats are, all attempts after the first successful one will fail, and combat will begin.
Speaking of combat… you didn’t expect a caravan to have only a leader, right? Neither did I.
Fight with Multiple Enemies
This issue was controversial for me.
One part of me wanted to keep portrait images as the avatar of the army… so on the map, it’s just one portrait image, but when combat begins, there are multiple units. HOWEVER, this would discard all the plans I had about buffs/debuffs. For example, if the player is hungry and I show the icon in the corner, the army might not be hungry. Or just because the player is freezing, maybe other units aren’t. Another part of me was telling me NOT to implement multiple units. But then, what would I do with possible multiple unit scenarios? No caravan travels alone… I also want to have a pet system. Then how would I implement that?
After thinking about this for a long time, I decided to have multiple unit combat. However, I decided to keep “extra units” as a spell. So, I created a “Summon” spell. This spell summons a unit, and its cooldown resets when combat ends. With this implementation, technically, when the player is cold, they’re cold. The units are not. The units aren’t even there—they only appear when combat begins.
After finishing the Summon spell, I created two new NPCs: Dogs and Elven fighters (melee). This way, caravans (elven) can have their small party. With them, I was able to create a nice combat scenario with multiple enemies. Nice!
After completing the player vs. NPC party combat, I continued with NPC vs. NPC party combat, meaning wolves vs. caravans. First, I needed to modify the wolves’ behavior against caravans. Now, if they see a caravan, they attack. If they survive, they eat the people there and have a full belly. The caravan, of course, responds the same way they do to the player—by summoning their units and attacking. While implementing this, I realized I needed to add aggro logic to the wolves so they can prioritize their targets rather than just focusing on one. So, I implemented that. 🙂 Now, they evaluate the total damage they receive and focus on the one that deals the most damage.
These were the version 0.2 combat implementations. After that, I tested the mechanics thoroughly, noted down the bugs, and decided to revisit them at the end of the 0.2 version.
After this, I started the Tavern implementation, but it’s still in progress, so I’ll share more in next month’s devlog.
Thank you for reading this devlog and for your support 🙂 Talk to you next month!
PS: I’m trying to be more active on social media, so feel free to follow me on Instagram or X.
BYE!