Weekly Report (June 17th)

Hey.

I ran into way more problems than I had anticipated at the beginning of the previous week. I thought the basis for the combat perks was sound, but as it turned out, it was not. Not really. The reason why I posted an update so late is because I have spent the whole day trying to make it work, SOMEHOW. In the end, I decided to release this bare-bones functionality, to just make it LOOK like perks are actually part of gameplay.

I added five perks, 'Defending', 'Defended', 'Defensive stance', 'Bleeding', and 'Stunned'. The first three work fine. They last for a turn (from the moment the performer applies the perk to the moment it's their turn once more, or they are defeated). They are added depending on who defends whom. If you defend yourself, 'Defensive stance' will be added. If you defend someone else, the performer will get 'Defending' (makes the performer more susceptible to damage), and the target will get 'Defended' (less susceptible).

'Bleeding' and 'Stunned', on the other hand, are straight up broken. I was trying to add a die roll to adding and removing them, with chances depending on the characters' stats. It didn't work out, yet. Just an hour ago, I decided to simply add them unconditionally if the combat action can add the perk (all attacks with sharp weapons will add 'Bleeding'; and the Low Blow skill will stun a male character), and let them only last a turn (I wanted to roll a die before the character's turn to decide if the perk should get removed or stay). 'Bleeding' will add damage once, when the character with bleeding begins their turn, and the stunned character will skip one upcoming turn. Bleeding can be cured with either a potion, a healing spell, or the First Aid skill.

These and other changes:

- Added perks;

- Fixed a bug that deleted all consumables of the same type when using one in combat via the Belt(e.g. you had two healing potions on your belt -> used one potion -> both got deleted. Now the issue is no more);

- Fixed a bug where, when you performed a combat action with the protagonist, the outcome would always read that 'you received damage/would take less damage/was healed', etc, even though it was supposed to read that the target was receiving damage, taking less damage for a turn, and so on. Now everything should be correct.

Previously, my roadmap, for this week and the week after, used to be: 1) add critical hits and dodging; 2) rework decision-making for NPCs. Unfortunately, the previous week wasn't a complete success in the perks department. I will have to dedicate another week to perks. I also feel the need to rework how combat moves work. So, this will likely require another week. In other words, I will need to spend another 3-4 weeks on combat. Welp. I did say that I'd probably need the full June and a chunk of July. I was right.

I need to rest. My head hurts. Stress of the past week is getting to me.

See you next week.