Week 10

Waves... Waves... And More Waves!!!

Picture from League of Legends

This week, a fairly important aspect was given to me which was implementing a Wave System. This is one of the Core Mechanics of our Game and had to be tied up this week. As such, I was in charge of getting the Wave system itself while Julian had to handle the Minion Spawn.

 Based on the Skype Discussions, 2 options were thrown up for the Wave System.

1. Waves Increment (Minions spawn) after all pre-existing Minions have been killed
2. Waves Spawn after a certain set time - this imposes a penalty if the player doesn't kill all the minions in time.

Weighing the Pros and Cons of each option -- the team decided on the first option. This matches the style of more traditional Tower Defences. This allows a more relaxed pacing of the game instead of needing to constantly worrying when the next wave would spawn.

 With the Wave System "style" being chosen - Code has began to be processed. Unfortunately, after starting the basic "At the Start of the Game", I remembered that the Spawn Minions coding has not yet been implemented (thereby cannot be used).

 As such, a "substitute" set of codes was used which involved setting an integer called "Number Of Minions Available". In addition, a String shows up which presents to the user as a "proof" that X minions have spawned. This allows troubleshooting for future methods that will be implemented in the Wave System.

 This Code System should be replaced with the "Spawn Minions" code upon completion and was commented as such for other programmer's awareness upon implementation.

So, it's time for the actual Wave Implementation...

Like the design we agreed on, we check if there are any enemies still alive before initiating the Wave Incrementation system. As a Custom Event, the plan is to attach this to whenever a minion is killed (in other words, if a minion is killed - run this event).

If there are no enemies still alive - run a String announcing the Wave's end, increment the wave and respawn the enemies. Again... with the Spawn Minions being inexistant, this Implementation was all code-based.

Unfortunately, since the "actual" minion spawn hasn't been coded (which has been a fairly major issue when creating this code). Another method is needed to be made to reduce the integer created earlier (Number of Minions Spawn) to test if when the Number of Minion Spawn reaches 0, the wave system is activated.

Another more simple event based on a key-press ("V") was formed. All it did was "kill a minion" and reduce the Number of Minion Alive integer. Following this, it calls the custom event above (that is the actual Wave Implementation). 

This worked perfectly and while it wasn't the Wave System we all dreamt of - it's definitely a step in the right direction and that we had some idea where we want to go.