Day 3 progress: magic, the meat of the game!

Today I wasn’t able to accomplish quite everything I intended to, but I am glad that I was able to get started on the main feature of this game, the magic spells!

To cast a spell, you hold ctrl, then press a direction in which to cast the spell (you can press 5 or . to cast at yourself, but there are no beneficial spells yet so don’t do that!), and finally you type a magic word and press enter. The power of the spell depends on your accuracy in typing the word, but the amount of mana it costs depends on your speed. So if you’re a great typist, you can get powerful spells on the cheap, but if not, you’ll have to settle for one or the other - do you type carefully to make it more powerful at the cost of accuracy, or rush for a cheaper but less powerful spell? If you’re too slow, the spell might cost more mana than you have, so it will fizzle.

Right now I have two spells implemented: a fire spell and an earth spell. I intend to add four more basic elemental spells, and then add two-word spells that can combine different elements; each element will act as a modifier when used before another spell.

What do the spells do? Well, the fire spell inflicts damage, of course, and the earth spell slows an enemy for a few turns. They only work within line of sight; you can’t hit fogged monsters with your spells. And right now they can only be cast in the four cardinal directions, or at yourself, same as your movement.

I didn’t get a chance to add animations of the spells’ trajectories yet, either; hopefully I can do that later!

Also, the magic words are randomly selected from a handful of options, but right now I hardcoded the seed for testing purposes. Once I add a dynamic seed, your muscle memory will not be enough! 😉