v2.0

• Imp Placeholders... Replaced:

     The last of my placeholder models are gone. Fire Ghouls have taken their place!

• Death and Counter Attack:

     When I introduced counter-attacks last week, I found some issues with my code structure. My code was working under the assumption that characters would only die at their "home" positions, and so I ran into all kinds of wonkiness when an attacking character died from a counter in the middle of the battlefield. My workaround was to prevent counter attacks that could be fatal, but I didn't like this approach. This week I restructured my code so that it doesn't matter where a character dies, and counter-attacks can once again be lethal. (Note: to test out lethal counter attacks, the Fire Dragon has been gifted with a particularly nasty counter).

• Moving to phase 2

     My goal when I began this project was just to build the turn-based combat system for an RPG. Specifically, I set out to create the following:

1.  A way to make any type of attack or spell I could ever want in an RPG: melee attacks, area of effect spells, damage over time, heals, cures, rezes, etc. - I now have the tools to create whatever abilities I want and put them on friend or foe.
2. A fully functional, menu-based, ability-selection system where the player chooses 1 command for each of their party members each turn. I wanted the navigation of this system to work intuitively (e.g. pressing [esc] takes you back a step, clicking on a character selects that character, etc). As far as I can tell, this is all working properly.
3. A stats system to determine things like hits/misses, crits, initiative order, dmg amounts, hit points, mana, etc. 
4. Turn based combat, where an order is established, and each character acts in turn. This had to handle questions like: "what happens when a character dies before their turn? " and "what if a character's chosen target is dead when their turn starts?"

     I managed to build all of the things I'd hoped to when I started the project, and I'm pretty happy with the results. And so, I've decided to expand the scope of the project. I've only just started, and this week's build shows the first step. The player can now right-click and move around in an "overworld" and transition to the battle via a button in the top-left corner of the screen.  My goal is to begin building on this, adding to the overworld and introducing the traditional "random encounters" as the player wanders around.

     If i like how things are going, I will start work on other RPG systems, such as questing, inventory, crafting, etc. One step at a time!