Hi!
Time for the weekly devlog.

This week I programmed a lot more of the combat, I think it's reached its minimum viable product. Although I couldn't test it since my router had an issue and I can't host a server. 

I changed the timings of things a lot since last week. I also added two new attacks. A follow-up hit to the normal attack to serve as a 2hit combo. And a stab attack, that can be performed by attacking while rolling.

I experimented a bit with allowing the player to quickly input a direction just before an attack becomes active to turn around. This will allows players to quickly strike others following behind them.  Canceling the dash/roll into a stab attack also seems like a good way to bait and trick an opponent. 

Finally, I added a Parry move, the character bashes their shield, if another player attacks the shield at the right time than they'll suffer from a small stun, but enough for a counter-attack.

You can see a video of the current move set below.

I've been trying different way's of programming movement with online, I tried having the client send a command to the server to move the character. However, this made  the movement seem a bit laggy, so I decided to have the movement happen locally and the new position then gets sent to the server and syncs with all clients.

The team and I also got together to talk about some of the software engineering side of things. I proposed a backlog of the different parts that would need to be implemented and specified what needs to be done in each one. We also decided on what we should aim to have by the end of the first out of two months we have left. 

The last thing I want to talk about is the pen and paper prototype we're meant to test for our class. I wrote the rulebook for a D&D like game, with a dungeon master controlling the game and four players. This felt like a  good idea because I could test with 4 other players even from our own home. However, it was obvious from the playtesting this wasn't working. The fact that 4 players need to play simultaneously meant there was a lot of downtime just waiting for your turn. Also, I wanted to focus on making players betray each other more, but simplifying the combat to dice roll based combat just made the game boring and unengaging. However, I think I've had the perfect idea on how to prototype the mechanics I want to test, in a completely different format. I think it's very different from the examples the teacher's gave us, but it will be quick to implement, it will serve as a good sandbox to test the mechanics I want to try, more importantly, it'll actually be fun to play. I don't want to spoil it, but it will no doubt show up in next week's log. I hope I don't get a bad grade by deviating, but it feels like too good of an idea to pass up, I actually think I'll be able to get valuable feedback from this experiment and I can't wait to get to it tomorrow.

See ya next week!