Fixed up all ranged combat, and added the final thing on my list in terms of equipment usage: ability-granting items. We decided to not use a spellbook/spell-learning system like most rogue-likes use, and instead went with a system where you have a list of abilities that you can activate, granted by the items you are currently wearing. This way, if you want to be a spell-slinging wizard, you end up wearing and using wizardly type items. If you want to be a big dumb barbarian type, you won't get spells, because the big dumb barbarian items don't give you spells (but you might get a Nordic Fury Axe Sweep or something ridiculous like that).

Anyway it is kind of hackishly placed in there. I've used different methods now for each of Monsters, Items, and Abilities, to see which one I liked best. So far the verdict is "none of them", but we'll see. Hopefully I'll decide on one way and then migrate everything into that pattern.

Gripping stuff!

All right! So I am basically done the reorganizing that I've been working on, and I've arrived at a combat mechanic that I like. Working through implementing that and reworking the various kinds of attacks to use the new approach rather than the old way of doing things which was basically have objects wave their hands at each other and shout a lot.

And welcome Hyptosis, to Gruedorf! I'm sure you will shortly be shaming me into oblivion with how awesome your updates are compared to mine. (Check out Hyptosis' impressive list of completed games at his site, Lorestrome.) Hyptosis is, of course, the guy doing the swanky art in Daisy Dust.

Okay, I've cleared up the majority of the stuff I was wrestling with last week.

Now, I am instead wrestling with contested-action mechanics (read: combat). It's been kind of a painful mental slog but I think I'm settling on a model now. In the meantime, some of the things I've added like throwing weapons and grenades are sort of broken, but I'll get them fixed up as soon as I settle on how they're actually supposed to work, haha! Then adding the last few sorts of attack options should be pretty short work (I hope). Then onto gritty (but fun) stuff like monster AI and better level generation.

I'm hoping I'll have this thing basically complete by the end of the year. And I'm not sure that this is insane! Hooray!

And what is up with that Grue guy and his not posting? I guess he's "moving" or something. Whatever, lame excuse.

Been a bit of a rough week for development. I'm in the process of refactoring how the main play state handles its different modes (exploring, inventory, targetting, etc) and so far I've managed to just break it. Something is not working with the Flixel cameras, so it's crashing. Hooray!

Along with this, trying to get caught back up with Ashayta and I also got a new computer this week (so I finally have a desktop again, which is actually really awesome) so I've been setting my work environment back up.

Next week will be better.

Flew back to eastern Canada for most of a week to attend my brother's wedding. It was cool, but didn't leave me a whole lot of time to work on Daisydust except for when I was stranded half-delirious from sleep deprivation in the Montréal airport. Good times!

So what I did manage to accomplish is rewriting the way messages are built so we can now compose useful messages like "You slash at the slime. The slime takes damage!" instead of monstrosities like "You has taken damage. You has died." I think it's an improvement.

I think I actually got a bit more done but that's the big thing. Honestly I was hoping to get more done during my vacation from work but it never works that way. The end of the year is approaching pretty fast...