Today I've spent all day adding the card and spell menu into the game. I've also re-hauled the music playing bit of the code, so there should be fewer bugs. I've also touched up some of the HUD graphics.
None of this changes the gameplay in the slightest, but it's good to get it out of the way. I've been ironing out the last few bugs from the code. None of them were too major. The game should soon be ready to see more content, since we've got the main engine pretty much completed now. Let me just explain what the cards and spells do.
CARDS are collected by defeating enemies. The card shows the enemy's stats. Think of it as a pokemon card. It's a bit useless at the moment, unless you want to know you've killed 134 floating heads. But it opens up a lot of doors in the way of achievements, and will help you to identify the weak point of enemies once you've killed them.
SPELLS are pretty much the same as cards, only they show you the stats of the spells you cast. You can't get these SPELL cards by casting the spells. That would be too easy for veterans of the game. However, by completing quests you'll be able to collect these cards.
Of course, this means that anybody who has played the game so far will have obsolete save files and will have to start again. Unless you don't want the spells you learn from the tutorial on your character's profile.
Some of you may be asking what the point is in adding these, since they don't alter the gameplay at all. The main point of this game was not to punish veteran players if they started again. You can still cast all of the spells you can remember in your head, but if you're the completionist sort of player, you'll want to do all of the quests and the like, just to be able to look at your cards screen and say that you've collected them all. And, of course, it opens a couple of doors if we ever decide to expand the gameplay further based on the cards you've collected.
One gameplay altering addition in the new update is the jump to two spell types; NORMAL and SPECIAL. You see that fourth, grey spell box you couldn't use? Well, now that's reserved for SPECIAL spells. These are powerful, slow charging spells. You can only use one at a time, and they will consist of the ultimate healing, attack or defence spells that you'll see in this game. There's one slight catch- you need to have 3 spells on the go at once before you can cast one of these special ones. This stops players from entering a super combo before going into a fight. Instead, these SPECIAL attacks will only be available when you're knee-deep in floating heads or what ever you happen to be fighting. I don't know how this will play out, so far I haven't found it frustrating in the slightest and I've been playing it all day. It's also fairly easy to exploit, but before I change it further I'd like to see what Mr Tom thinks of it, since he hasn't been online today.
So yeah, that's it for now, and stay tuned for a major update soon!
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