Development Log #079

Overhead Numbers & Better Misses – May 27th 2023

A large part of the on-screen display is devoted to various numbers floating overhead a unit. While these numbers are usually all logged, so you can always look back at them, they can be somewhat confusing at first.

These numbers are mainly there to show real-time damage, healing, experience gains, and a plethora of other bits of info. They’re usually color-coded, so once you get the hang of it, seeing a green 6, will automatically translate to “oh my unit healed 6 HP”.

Even the most simple attacks can cause a chaotic chain reaction of combat information. In this example (shown above) we’re going to give Miranda a Manashield, then push her towards some barrels (typical Saturday).

Just to note: Manashield is a status effect that has your MP take attack damage instead of HP. However, once we get to 0 MP, your HP will start taking damage.

So wow, we are seeing a lot numbers: (pink) 22, (red)10, 10, 16, 33, 0!

Let’s break this down! To the right we have an image with 4 numbered boxes. I’ll put the image number that pertains to the discussion in brackets [#].

Miranda starts with 104 HP & 26 MP. Note that she has a Manashield Buff (attacks do MP damage so long as MP > 0).

The initial Shove did 0 HP damage & 22 MP [#1] damage via Manashield.

The barrels each took 10 HP [#1] damage, & Miranda crashing into them caused her -16 HP [#2] & -33 HP [#3] damage. (-49 total damage)

She hits the wall, but only after crashing through barrels, so she wasn’t going too fast, so she takes <1 Damage [#4] (This would currently show as 1 damage, as all damage is at least 1)

Whew, I’ll tell you that it’s probably more confusing trying to break it down!

Anyway, as a result Miranda should end up with 55 HP & 4 MP. We also lost 2 barrels!

For now, Manashield only activates for the initial attack damage, so it wasn’t used to protect Miranda during the crashes. If this is changed she would have saved another 4 HP but had 0 MP left. (It might change)

Now, don’t worry about all that math. Partly because there might be some issues with it currently, and also because we have a Battle Log!

Now in the beautiful Unifont fixed width font, we have a log we can look back on to see that everything was accounted for. IF it wasn’t, then this is where YOU come in! I’ll need tons of bug reports before everything is working perfectly. Of course by the time the game releases, this should all be fixed.

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These calculations are probably the most difficult part in terms of straight math coding that exist in the game. There are plenty of variations on what happens and when it can happen, that each situation follows a very strict guideline.

Besides Manashield, we have Thorns (reflects damage), Survive (unit survives with 1 HP if it’s a killing blow), and Auto-Life (should the unit die, it is automatically brought back to life 1 time). There’s a specific order of operations here that goes into play, but it creates some interesting outcomes.

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Lastly, missed attacks now look more ‘missed’ than ever. When an attack misses, the targeted unit will move out of the way!

Note: Remember, some of the images and gameplay depicted here may be outdated and does not represent the current state of the game!