Devlog 2

The second build for my game was mainly technical with a focus on getting a simple version of the opponent ai to be working. 

Along with that I included art for the attacks currently included to make it clear what is happening on the screen, which was a piece of advice i got from playtesting the game.

In the end I decided to not make pixel art for the game and instead I used photoshop to make all of the art and animations. Replacing all of the placeholders that I was using for the attacks with the art helped to start making the game feel more hectic which is the feeling that I want for the final build.

Aside from the art the main thing that I wanted done for this build is the opponent ai. I had some trouble trying to figure out how I would implement it but I ended up going with a system that would have the opponent first look to see if the player is in range for any of its attacks to hit, and if there are none then it would try to move closer to the player. 

The version I got working is simple and I have ideas for how to make it smarter so I will try to make it smarter for later builds that I make. 

Below is an image of the ai moving on its own and attempting to keep track of the players location. 

Cleaning up all of the debugging sprites that I had, this is what the game currently looks like. The art included makes it clear to know what is going on, and having the ai opponent be able to move around makes it so there is more going on in the screen which allows for some strategy to start forming. 

Originally I wanted to tweak the movement system since I saw that there were concerns with it from players that play tested the game but I decided that it would be better to start on the opponent ai. This is because any changes to the player movement would also affect the opponent, so before I make any changes I wanted to see how the current movement system works when both the player and opponent are able to move and attack during their respective turns. Now that I have this done I got a better idea of how the movement plays and I have ideas as to how to improve it to make it feel better and you are not stuck with no options.