Devlog - 09 June 2025 to 21 June 2025

So this month has been quite productive and made a ton of positive steps in the right direction (having last week off help a lot). So productive in fact, I am now aiming to provide a Devlog every 2 weeks. The aim for this is to help push myself to keep working on the game - though only time will tell if I keep this up; particularly if progress slows to a halt.

With all being said, I have made progress and it has been 2 weeks since my last one so let's get into it.

PROGRESS SINCE LAST DEVLOG (9 JUN - 20 JUN)

So the goals set from my last update were as below:

- Make upgrades apply and items usable

- Resolve persistent data issues (Persistent Player Data throughout game, Campaign saved until success/failure)

- Add boss node and logic (not wanting anything too fancy for this)

- Add basic sounds, music and options

Of these 4 I would first focus on items and persistent data.

At the time, I had item ideas with some basic information but there was no built in logic or function for them to be used. Persistent data wasn't much better as I came across errors within the game and the inclusion of enemy AI scripts, whilst basic, generated their own avatars making the loading process quite confusing.

Needless to say, there was a lot to do but I am pleased to say that, whilst they aren't 100% in place, a ton of hours have been put in and they are much closer.

Items

Item codes have been expanded on with a script for actions. This has enabled me to code an action, save an action as a Scriptable Object so I can attach these to my items. When an item is used, it will then run through these actions and has replaced the old logic.

Upgrades now are functional and work as expected - upon pickup, upgrades no longer store in an inventory but automatically apply.

Items now become intractable based on game state and click them activates them. One new item added to test this - "Pigs Bladder". The rest will need coding up but ideally want to be able to navigate between scenes first so I know they will work within the game flow.

On top of this, I adjusted the trader to enable them to sometimes offer item exchanges rather than purely ask for coins.

Persistent Data

This took a ton of work, requiring me to re-facture a ton of old code. The avatar data is now stored within the player data, the save file holds and loads this in each scene.

I haven't yet got a Campaign Saver, nor a save for the nodes to track this so there is still a lot to do. That being said, the work done to get the player data persistent for what I have done is large. There was old infrastructure I had to re-learn and tear apart, testing to make sure everything is saving and loading as expected.

Testing today though, the Save and Reset buttons on the Avatar customisation screen works and transitioning between scenes seems to be working.

NEXT STEPS

Over the next 2 weeks, my main focuses are going to be:

1) Setting up Campaign/Node Saver

2) Get Battle Scene to load via Async rather than loading scene

3) Transition from Campaign to Battle seamlessly

4) Code up Items

Not sure if this is too big of a bite - my hope is that Async will be easier than it sounds to me but we will see in 2 weeks time. I've not plans to do anything beyond these 4 things, though if this goes surprisingly well, next steps beyond this are the conflict events and bosses.

RETROSPECTIVE - What went well / Could have gone better?

Honestly both of these went well - although learnt that Singletons are machine specific. I've done a ton of restructuring so trying hard to think ahead a bit more to avoid a ton more refactoring later.

Started asking questions on "who is the player" and "how does the game know who the local player is". These are important questions to ask early on to avoid falling into the same issues.

I need to acknowledge that the progress made over these last two weeks however was, in a fair part, due to me having a week on leave so progress updates might not be large.

Take care,

PatBard07 

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