v1.4

     Well, I'm back from vacation and back at it! On a personal note, whenever I take time off I usually find it difficult to get back into my projects. My code looks foreign, I'm reminded of all the things my project is lacking, and  my motivation to jump back in is almost non-existent. I've found there is only one cure, and that is to just dive back in anyway. Before long, the code starts to make sense again, I remember why I started the project in the first place and motivation slowly increases. Perseverance is a virtue, my friends!

     Programming Note: This week I made some changes to the structure of my code to streamline things. I found some crossover between my spells and melee attacks, and was able to consolidate a few classes. When it comes to code, whenever you can get the same functionality with fewer lines of code, it's a big win, so ... YAY!

     I'm pretty happy with the way things are turning out. I have a relatively easy-to-use system that allows me to make a wide variety of spells and attacks. I can create anything from Direct damage spells/melee attacks, to Heal-over-time effects, to cures and dispels. Now it's a matter of testing the system by creating a whole bunch of spells and attacks, and fixing any bugs I find along the way.

From a game-play perspective this week there were a few changes:

• New Spells: Death Touch and Earthen Spikes
• Particle Effects: I made it so that my particle effects scale with character size.
• Saul's dmg proc removed: I wasn't happy with how my code was dealing with procs. I eventually want procs tied to weapons which I have not yet implemented, so I have removed the procs altogether for now.
• Added heals and ranged attacks to silver imps
• (For Testing) Increased HP of all PCs and NPCs by a multiple of 10. This allows for longer battles to ensure menus, animations, spells, etc are all behaving as expected.
• Added some simple animations / sounds / particle effects related to the new spells.

I'm hoping to spend much of next week creating more spells and attacks to test out.