Update on Heroes' Journey

Hello everyone!

I wanted to give you an update on what has happened on Heroes' Journey since my last post. In my last post I went over the Characteristics (Abilities/Attributes/Stats) that I am using in the game and I only had the basic damage calculations done. I have made a lot more progress since then. Here are just a couple brief descriptions of what has been implemented:

• Battle now supports using skills (which apply Buffs/Debuffs), as well as basic damage and skipping your turn. 
• Skills now use Action Points to use, and you regenerate AP at the beginning of each turn
• Damage calculations now take into account modifiers from armor, weapons, buffs, and debuffs
• Attacks/Skills now support the ability to target different groups, like Self, Friend, or Foe.
• If you are victorious you now receive gold, XP, and loot based upon the enemy types that were defeated. 
• All of the base classes created for Enemies, all Item types, Skills, Buffs, and Debuffs

I have a little more work too for dispersing gold and loot, since when I initially wrote it I didn't take into account that the player party will be pooling gold and loot to make it less of a hassle to manage your items. That should be a pretty quick fix, then I can start creating enemies, items, skills, and so on so I can actually start testing the system under different circumstances.

I wanted to go over how I am handling the loot tables, but I plan on doing that as a separate post, since I have a feeling it will be a little lengthy.

Another thing I wanted to throw out there is that I started using Microsoft OneNote since my last post that has helped a lot for organization and motivation. It's free, and I recommend giving it a shot. 

The program is comprised of Notebooks, Sections, and Pages. Notebooks hold Sections and Sections hold Pages. This is how I set it up:

Notebook: Project/Game Name

Sections: Major components of the game. For instance, Mechanics, Story, Work Log, Project Timeline, and so on.

Pages: A breakdown of the above subcategories, This is where all of the actual details are written down.

I started doing my daily work logs in OneNote and it has helped a lot for keeping track of what I did on what day, and what persistent issues I need to tackle.

For instance, if I have two items on my To-Do list on one day and get one done it would look like this:

The next day I work on the game I copy over the tasks that are not complete, and add any new items I run in to as well:

This allows me to have a rolling log of tasks that need to be completed, and if need be I can check what changed between one day and the next and figure out what all I did on a given day.

Another nice feature is you can share it across multiple devices/users so it makes it really easy to collaborate with team members, or takes notes from your phone when you get an idea.

Anyway, catch ya in the next post!