Hello Again
Hello again, Devin here with another intern log. This week I continued working on the battle system for Monochrome. A few of the main features that I got done this week are as follows; I was able to get a formula working for affinity affecting how much damage is done, I added a consumable item for healing, and I refined the active time bar based on feedback.
This week’s video game recommendation is God of War (2018). This game is one of my favorite games of all time. The storytelling is phenomenal, the combat is fantastic, and just about everything this game has to offer is awesome. There is no reason you should not check this game out especially if you have a PS4. Check out the trailer below.
What I Accomplished
So, as mentioned briefly before I was able to accomplish quite a few things this week. I started the week by creating a formula that made it so the more affinity a target has, the more damage they will receive from attacks. This works both for and against the player. In order to get this calculation to work, I actually had to create two formulas. I created one for just the normal damage done to a target without any affinity, and then I created one that once the target’s affinity was over one it multiplied the normal formula by the amount of affinity the target has.
Once I had the formula working, I then created an item which is in the player’s inventory, and is used by the player in order to heal a certain amount of health. This was my first time working with the ORK item system, but it was actually really easy to implement.
Once those two features were added; I fixed some basic UI issues, and fixed the battle win/end events so that the player can continuously click new game in the main menu in order to keep playing, instead of having to restart the application. Finally, once all of those issues were fixed I posted a build of the battle system to our Monochrome Discord. Some people played the demo, and had some feedback. The main criticism was that the active time bar filled too slowly, so I tweaked it and made it fill a lot quicker.


Next Week
Next week I am going to start working on creating attack/defense attributes that are assigned to each combatant. These attack and defense attributes will be affected by combatant types that I create and add to each combatant as well. We have around six different combatant types planned, and each type will be strong/weak against other combatant types. For example; Music counters Action, Action counters SFX, and SFX counters Music.

Thoughts
Overall this was a great week. I was able to accomplish a lot, and get a functional build of the battle system to some play testers. Every week the Monochrome battle system gets closer and closer to what the team at DVNC is looking for, and that makes me excited. I also did not run into any big roadblocks this week which was great. On top of that I am getting better and better each week with the ORK Framework. It is a big system to learn, so improving my ability to use it is awesome.
That concludes my intern log for the week. Be sure to check my previous posts, and check back next week for my next one!