Intro

Hi! I'm not actually a developer, I'm a game designer. But I really wanted to improve our game, so I started learning. This is my devlog, where I tell you what I've managed to do.

September 25, 2024

Today, I implemented a defensive ability for the drone, and it now works as intended (before it didn't work at all, but it should decrease all incoming damage by 2 times). I did this by adding a new variable, using examples of other implemented functions.

I also tried to fix the bug with unlocking new spells, but it doesn't work very well with asynchronous scene loading. Sometimes spells unlock, sometimes they don't. Spells made as scriptable objects and to "unlock" the system just change the boolean value. My colleague said, that there is ways to fix it, so I'll return to that problem later.

September 26, 2024

I reworked the attack methods’ linkage to animations. This turned out to be more time-consuming than expected, requiring me to rewrite most of the combat scripts, and there’s still plenty of work ahead. In addition, a lot of code needs to be refactored now. But it works! I used the event system inside the animations themselves, so now methods are called at the right moments.

It looks like that before. Enemy already get the damage, and player animation not even started.

Additionally, I added a modal window at the end of combat, showing which spells were unlocked. This doesn’t fix the bug, but it enhances the player’s experience since the results of the battle is clearer. The issue likely stems from value loss during async scene loading.

Before

New victory window. I'll fix the texture overlaying later

October 1, 2024

I’ve implemented damage values that consider defense, and added corresponding damage type to the battle info text. Now player can see what actually happened and how much damage he deal or is dealt.

Furthermore, I’ve now implemented vulnerability and resistance mechanics in combat. Different enemies have different relations with various types of damage. So an observant player now can make out a better strategy for each enemy. But to do this I had to add a new damage type ("NONE"), and this shifted all the settings in the prefabs and scripts that referenced this array of types.

I also added a transparency visual effect for the invisibility mechanic to make it more clear to the player.

October 2, 2024

Today I successfully solved the problem of unlocking spells using PlayerPrefs by adding a new key for each spell instead of toggling the object value like before. The unlocking problem was solved surprisingly easily, but I'm still not sure about its reliability, since the bug did not occur every time. I hope that during future improvements I will be able to verify this.

With this major bug fixed, I can now focus on further improvements.

Also, from now, when starting a new game from the menu, the entire progress (unlocked and learned spells) is reset, allowing players to begin new game. 

October 3, 2024

I have successfully implemented tooltips for our spell manager. These tooltips provide with important information about each spell: name, current level, mana generation, damage value, damage type and cooldown. Additionally, the tips are updated in real time, so the player can click on update button and immediately see what has changed. I wanted to make them move along the mouse cursor, but because of the 3D scene tooltips were moving unpredictably, so I make them static for each spell slot.

Polishing the tooltips took up my entire evening as I had to place them on all the scenes, set the size and make them disappear when they should be hidden.

Conclusion 

I really enjoyed working on improving the game. Now I have a much better understanding of how Unity works and how game logic functions. In future projects, I might even be able to implement some things on my own. By the way, some of the improvements I made were based on player feedback, so a huge thanks to them for their input!

I hope you like the game and my little devlog of non-dev. Best wishes!

P.S. You can find unimproved game versions under this post and updated versions on the game page.