Damage types

Just a quick update to show you what's been the recent focus of development; also it's a very visual area of development so I get to make screenshots!

Basically all the code required to apply visual effects to weapons and enemies is in place as well as the the logic behind choosing the right modification based on the damage type (e.g., fire damage will put "flames" on the weapon's sprite and on enemies who are set on fire by the weapon).

With all my lovely effects finished, I didn't really have a good place to test them out so I made some skeletons and chucked them in the bluff cave. I'm sure the hermit won't mind.

Enough talk, show some stuff:

Here we have a bunch of randomly generated swords with elemental effects attached (left to right: poison, cold, water, fire, lightning, trauma).

For the most part, at the moment at least, different damage types mostly determine how attack damage is reduced by defence. You can be resistant or immune to the various damage types and reductions are made accordingly. You can also be resistant to what's called the "damage delivery" which is kind of a "blanket resistance" that will make you resistant to an entire attack made with that delivery method.

What did I just say? Hold on, this example should clear things up: A sword might do 20 trauma damage and 10 poison damage and the delivery method would be "cutting". If you had 50% trauma resistance you'd take 20 damage:

(20 * 50%) + 10 = 20

If, however, you had 50% cutting resistance, the damage would not be selectively reduced and you would take 15 damage:

(20 + 10) * 50% = 15

A combination of the two would leave you with 10 damage:

((20 * 50%) + 10) * 50% = 10

Clearer? Perhaps!

The main thinking behind this scheme is to make it possible to include new, different attack types without requiring people to plan for all kinds of things. Delivery resistances will see you in good stead but those who want to micromanage will still have a bit of an edge, especially if they know what's lurking in the area they're going into.

Ah! Got a bit side-tracked there. So we have our lovely weapon effects! Grab those swords, run into the bluff cave and find those skeletons so we can watch them die in all kinds of ways!

I recommend playing this song while you read over the next part:

*Sound of skeletons being hit by magical weapons of all kinds*

When you attack a dude with a weapon that leaves a lingering damage-over-time effect (e.g., 20 poison damage over 6 seconds), they will show this status with the corresponding damage type's effect!

Stay dead this time, skeletons.