Devlog #3 The First Enemies and Coming to Terms

Dev Thoughts: 

Theses updates are backlogged, so sometimes my current thoughts don't fully reflect where I was then in the coding process. 

Something I've struggled with a lot is saying I'm a Programmer. I think a lot of game developers struggle with this, because it feels like; to be a programmer, you need that Computer Science degree, years of training or just to be absolutely brilliant at it.

 It feels easier to fall under the umbrella of game designer because that's so much more vague, there's more room to move around and you almost take less responsibility for the things you don't know. Its easier to say 'hey I don't know this [insert code here] because I'm not really a programmer, I just know a bit because I'm a game designer! I'm not supposed to know it!'.

 Its scary, to say you're a programmer and not know 'everything', but no one knows everything and its okay to screw up and learn from those screw ups or say I don't know, but I'm still a programmer, I'm just trying to be a better programmer. And it's something that's difficult to accept, but I think everyday I'm accepting it a little bit more as I work through this game. I am a programmer and I'm going to screw up as one, but that's okay.

The Birth of Enemies

Alright on with the code. So enemies. At this point (spoilers) I was set on making this a survival game, so the enemies were pretty basic. Units that just followed the player where-ever they were and attacked the moment they were close enough. Pretty standard, some could say boring, but in waves, they would feel like a real challenge. 

For the longest time I wanted to make the enemy and player have the same script, but I realized that it was better to just separate the two of them, instead of overcomplicating it by making them pull from the same code. Its not the most efficient, but it works and sometimes you need to just go simple instead of trying to be that complicated for a 'what if' scenario. As of now, my enemies just follow a simple state machine. 

Familiar Looking Enemy Attacks

Some may recognise the enemy attacking. I'm not ashamed to say I did just take it out from Death must Die. The way I did it was to have a separate attack zone spawn out from the enemy skeleton (the only enemy now). And I did it in a really scruffed way from the animation. I'm not even going to show it because it's looking back now I realized I did it in a very weird way. The only thing I like is that it is tied to the animation of the attack? The player attack zones are similiarly done, but also looking back it, not done very well and I'm going to be employing a different method come the future posts. So you'll see how I eventually changed it up there to be less 'screwed up'. 

On the surface, the attack works and while it is a straight copy of Death Must Die's attack now, I planned to expand in future (before there was a  major change in plans). I think it's fine to copy things to try and dissect how it was one before you tweak it to be your own. There's more I could say about interfaces and how that's used to make both objects damageable, but I encourage anyone who's not sure what an interface is to go look it up. Online tutorials explain it really well. Anyways, that's the update for this time. 

Tene out!